Change

You know one of the most difficult aspects of my leg loss is sitting in my wheelchair looking through the sliding glass doors that lead to my balcony watching people walk by.

It bothers me on so many levels. First and foremost I miss walking. As we all know I am learning to walk or rather improving my ability to walk and making fairly good progress, however, I know it will never be the effortless casual walking a "normal" person does. Even though I don't dwell on those thoughts they still enter my mind and I wouldn't be human if I didn't wish this whole leg loss had never happened.

Another aspect of this loss I feel is that I will never look good in my clothes. This may sound vain and selfish but I miss trying on clothes or putting on something new and feeling like I look good in it.

Occasionally I have had thoughts about why I work so hard, to learn to walk, to drive, to lift weights, to take pride in my appearance, and for what?

Every time I start to feel those feelings I remember what my good friend Steve said to me, "Glenn you would feel even worse about yourself if you didn't work out or try as hard as possible to walk, it is just the type of person you are."

Steve is right about all of that, I do still care about my appearance, I will (am) still walk (ing) again and I do remain strong. Sometimes we slip into a a bit of "I wish it were this or that," "I wish that this had not happened," what if, what if, what if...

Life is not about what ifs, it is about reality. I constantly remind myself to stay in the present moment, after all the present moment is the only moment.

Presently I am writing this blog and I am thankful I have this outlet to express my inner most thoughts, to share my feelings and to understand myself through this writing.

When I look at my life, where I am, what I am doing, I can choose the way I feel about it. I could choose a path of self pity, poor me, or the path of jealousy, why did this happen to me? or they have such a great and easy life and my life is so hard.

Perhaps an even more destructive path might be alcoholism or drug addiction to soothe my pain and suffering.

These are just some of the paths that I could have chosen but I did not choose any of those paths. I chose to try to be as optimistic as possible about my future, paying particular attention to the good in my life.

Taking each day one at a time, staying as present as possible, has helped me to focus on the good in my life. Reminding myself of all of the wonderful people who are a part of my life, helping me, comforting me, reassuring me and loving me.

Things will never be the same as they were before my leg losses but that does not predispose me to unhappiness or failure. Life is all about change. These changes can be viewed as changes for the better, like losing weight, or changes for the worse, like losing our job.

When things change in our life we must learn to accept those changes and move on. Nothing is permanent in life, including life itself.

As I have said on many occasions, for change to be successful, it must be coupled with faith. Having faith that the outcome of any change will be beneficial to you in the long run, will help you work toward achieving the goals you set for yourself.

My life has changed dramatically in the last few years and it has taken some time to adjust to those changes. Aside from losing my legs, another change has occurred in my life, awareness. I am so much more aware of my blessings, my strength, the beauty in the world around us, and my own feelings.

Change can be something we dread and fear or it can be something we welcome knowing that contained within that change lies great blessings and knowledge that we may never have attained otherwise.

I have chosen the latter.

*To leave a comment simply click comment to write to me personally, my email address is: glennartinc@yahoo.com