King of Wishful Thinking

'You are going to be fine!' this is what i heard from all my friends and family. u would think these words of positivity would provide me some comfort or relief, but no, they made me cry more. i didnt understand why. i was so confused for the longest time until a few weeks ago when a friend was explaining to me a similar situation. i cried because i SO BADLY wanted those words to be true. i cried because i SO BADLY didnt want these words to be too good to be true. i cried because i SO BADLY wanted to believe those words. but i couldnt. why couldnt I let myself be happy and be hopeful and just believe? any happiness and any possible hope had been stripped away from me. i was vulnerable and scared which allowed my mind to be tormented by all the negative, awful things i heard from medical professionals, which made the positive, hopeful things i heard from my family and friends seemed like mere wishful thinking. in the ICU, i overheard a nurse say, 'her parents think she is miraculously turn around, but i dont see that happening,' which destroyed the little hope i had, and another nurse said, 'why on earth was she at urgent care? if i was her, i would have gone to the ER!' which made me feel stupid and gave me the false idea that this could have been prevented had i been smarter. another doctor, who, i found out later, knew virtually nothing about my case, said that my stroke made me a quadripelegic and only my voice would return. she went on to educate me on the grieving process, and was probably in stage two: DENIAL. her words hurt, more than any other, and i cried, oh i cried. yes i trusted my family and friends more than these strangers, but arent medical professionals supposed to say things founded in fact and experience? there was a constant battle in my mind, hope versus hopelessness, optimism versus pessimism, wishful thinking versus wishless thinking. i could hear that nurse practitioner words on repeat, 'shes never going to walk again,' but then on the other side of that, i kept hearing, 'dont let the haters stop you from doing yo' thang!' ( you better know where thats from!) i didnt know what to believe. we had a meeting with my family, my doctors, and my therapists, so I thought I would finally get answers. The truth was, no one knew what was going to happen, so my doctors and therapists justifably didn't say anything about it. I began to cry because I was so scared and so confused. My cries were like howls that echoed across the room, so everyone must have felt how scared I was. So then my resident stood up, walked over to me, kneeled down, grabbed my hand and said, "We are just waiting for all the connections to be made, it all gets better from here."This was the first piece of positivity from anyone in the medical profession. I was so touched by her words because I felt like my two worlds that were battling each other were finally merging together. She gave me the strength to hope, she gave me a reason to believe, she gave me a chance to be free from all the negativity, she gave me a reminder that I am and always will be the optimistic, hopeful king of wishful thinking.