Three years ago, I endured an injury. Hard to believe that the calendar has ticked by three times. My life changed in an instant, and it’s been a rough road that I’m still walking. Learning to live with limitations is difficult. The diminished capability has me needing help for things I used to just do without thinking. For the first time in my life, I live with the knowledge that I am physically weak.
However, that doesn’t mean I should wallow in self-pity. It means that I need to follow the dream of writing that much more. A path that I stepped on just a month prior to my accident. September of 2016, I scratched the first words of my first novel, Artemas James and the Phantom Funeral Coach, in a little notebook. I had ruminated on the idea for a month before putting mechanical pencil to paper.
Just like anything in life, sometimes the signs of change appear before fate reveals its plans for you to you. In hindsight, the injury has told me that I need to follow this dream of writing and give up physical labor. To exercise my mind and rest my body. To use the burning pain as fuel to make the shift away from the things that cause it and focus on the things that make me forget it.
Maybe someday down the road, I will see the labor that supported me with gratitude as I complete my transition out of it. To know that the years of pain, surgery, rehabilitation all lead me to recognize a new me. Time will tell; after three years, I know that life will always challenge you, and you get to choose how you deal with it.