powerless

lifeless...motionless...powerless... that was how i felt 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. i needed someone to do every little thing for me like adjusting my legs if they were stiff or moving my arm if it was hanging off the bed. i was completely aware of the world around me, but completely unable to interact with it. some describe it as being buried alive and i think it feels like something between that and hell. i really and truly felt like a waste of space. when i had a test coming up in med school, i would waste hours on gchat and facebook instead of studying, and i would always say i felt like a waste of space, but this was the real thing. i could just lie in bed looking straight up (because i had no peripheral vision: my eyes didnt have full range of motion and my neck obvi couldnt move at all and often wore an 'awesome' neck brace) and i wasnt adding anything to the world around me, if anything, i was hurting it and the people around me. i was really just dead weight with a brain. i was physically (and probably emotionally) REALLY hard to handle. to transfer me, i needed two strong nurses or something called a hoyer lift which is the most god-awful piece of equipment ive ever used (sorry jeni!). everyone would try to be so gentle with me, but it was inevitable that i was beat up everyday, like my arm would get stuck under me when they turned me or my foot would get hit during a transfer. but i couldnt do anything about it. i was powerless. every single part of me, from my relentless spirit to my strong, running crazed legs, was powerless to the wrath of the cruel, cruel world around me. so i surrendered. i surrendered to the powers of fate. i couldnt compete with a world that could do this to me. i realized that it didnt matter who i was or what i believed, i couldnt control fate. the only battle i could fight was therapy - i could work harder than i had ever worked before. i couldnt fight with fate but i could certainly work to get the odds in my favor. somewhere in my heart, i did believe i was going to get better but that belief was hidden behind all my fears, covered by all my concerns, and poisoned by the awful things i heard people say.i didnt have the power to fight with fate, but i was able to surrender because you all were fighting that battle for me. it was the unwavering faith of my family, the reassuring confidence of baldeep, and the overwhelming support of my friends that was all more powerful than the strength of fate. fate had silenced us once before with this horrible injury, but we weren't staying quiet anymore. nisha once told me, ' we are all in this together,' and she was right. alone i was powerless, but together we were invincible, untouchable, powerful... and we wouldn't let fate win.