You Don't Choose A Life, You Live One

"You don't choose a life, you live one."  ~Emilio Estevez in "The Way"

I haven't seen this movie yet but that line out of it sure hits home.  I sure as hell didn't choose the life I'm living now.  No one would ever choose this life.  This is life-long suffering.  Not just a few years of suffering and pain but for the rest of my life.  It will never be the same for me, my body or my life.  Surgeries will happen until it's not worth it to do any more cause I'm too old and it won't make a difference in my quality of life.  I will always be in some kind of physical therapy for battling contractures and scar bands.  I will never be able to fully extend my arms over my head.  I will never be able to do what I used to do in yoga and Pilates because of the contractures that I will forever be in battle with.  I don't know if I'll ever be able to lay out on a beautiful beach of the finest sand because I fear what people will stare at with me in a bathing suit - the scars the cover my body or the large rectangular indent in my right thigh that will never fill in or both - and the fear of the possible damage the sun can do to my grafts.  I don't know if I'll ever be able to eat a hamburger again because my mouth is too tight with scar tissue to open large enough.  Should I go on?  No.  Because it's pointless.  My point, however, is to make an example of my life that it's life-long problems and life-long suffering and life-long pain.  I know it could be worse.  But this is what I'm living with and always will.  Surgeries for the rest of my life and these surgeries aren't easy.  First of all they have a hell of a time getting an IV in for one.  I have limited choices for an IV because of the scars the cover my body and then my veins are not easy to find so I can get poked with an IV needle anywhere from 3-8 times.  Then I have to go through a prep, sign away my life on papers for the doctor and the anesthesiologist so if something goes wrong, they can't be sued.  Then it's scary as all hell to be wheeled into the operating room cause I know once the anesthesia hits, which stings like crazy, I have no more control, no matter how many times I've done this.  And the pain that follows upon waking is like nothing I can explain to you.  And I have gone through this 32 prior times and have the rest of my life to go through this experience, one after another to fix this, to fix that.

Anyway, my point is I didn't choose this life.  I chose a much different life, or at least I thought I did.  But in all reality, I didn't choose that either.  Like he says, you don't choose a life, you live one.  And this is the one I've been dealt.  It sucks, no doubt about that.  But I must start living it.  I didn't choose any part of my life because you don't get to choose.  I made choices within it, but I didn't get to choose any part of it otherwise my life would have turned out very differently.  A lot of people's lives would have turned out differently if we got to choose.  But we don't.  No one does.  The choices we make lead us down different paths whether we realize where it's taking us or not.  Most of the time we think we know, but we really don't.  I once believed in things that were meant to be would be.  But it's hard to believe in that when something bad strikes in your life because who wants to believe that my accident, anybody's accident, was meant to be?  But maybe I should look at it from a different perspective in that what was meant to be was not the accident, but the positive changes in my life that have happened since the accident, though those are hard to come by right now.  But I don't know what further positives are going to come out of this whole thing but I have to start believing there will be a rainbow at the end of all this.  I will have my fairy tale.  I demand it.  I will just arrive at it from a different path than I originally planned.