#80 Chapter Seven
[NOTE: If you did not read issue # 79, most of this article will make no sense.]
The first time that I realized how much being handicapped was going to seriously suck was when I was trying to ‘wheel myself’ up the ramp and into the DMV in order to get my temporary handicap placard for my car. The ramp was no real problem, but the door to get into the place had a large metal strip attached to the floor that was too large for me to wheel over. I struggled in vein to get over this “hump” but had to stop when my wheelchair nearly tipped over, which would have sent me falling backwards, and onto my head. A crew of three strangers rushed to my assistance, and carried me in my wheelchair through the door. I was simultaneously humiliated and extremely grateful as every single head in the DMV turned to look at me and then quickly pretended they weren’t staring at me.
As I happily wheeled over to an open DMV agent’s desk, the woman behind the desk loudly exclaimed, “Oh my god, please tell me this isn’t permanent!” Knowing that I wasn’t permanently confined to a wheelchair, I assured her that I would walk again—but I still felt as though her question was insulting. The implication of her remark was that it would be terrible for someone like me to be permanently unable to walk.
Before I could get angry about her remark, I remembered that before I was struck by a car and forced to rely on other people’s assistance for every basic task I previously took for granted, I used to think that it may be worse to be paralyzed than simply to die. If I believed in a universe ruled by obvious “eye-for-an-eye” karmic law, then this accident would be the perfect punishment for my absurd theoretical preference for death over paraplegia. Oh Great God of Karma: I repent, I repent!!
Wheeling through the local department store, in an effort to purchase a few necessary items, I find it hard to read the labels on the objects placed on the shelves that tower over me as I yearn for objects beyond my reach. I lower my head and mumble “yes” when a store clerk asks me if he can assist me with anything. I want to throw a tantrum and yell, “I hate assistance. I never needed assistance. I am an assistor!” Now I actually need help reaching things, carrying things, moving things, pouring things…I…need…help.
At the local mall, a friend and I decide to wheel back to the car from a different exit at the far end of the mall. I figure the extra distance will provide me with a taste of exercise—exercise is that hobby I used to partake in six to seven days a week. Now it’s a cruel, tantalizing activity that “people like me can’t partake in.” Exercise has suddenly become as reasonable of an option as sex was when I was a misfit in High School.
So my friend and I wheel around the parking lot for what seems like an eternity. After about ten minutes, we reach a long ramp that will take us up to the second floor, where my car is parked. I triumphantly wheel myself up the ramp, excited by my “Handi-Capable” achievement, but also feeling the incredible ache that accompanies the act of moving my 165-pound body (plus the weight of the wheelchair) with the strength of only my two arms.
But when I reach the apex of this incredible journey, I am utterly devastated by the reality that whoever built this ramp did not have the handicapped in mind, for at the end of the ramp is a flight of four stairs and then a steep curb. My friend is strong, but not strong enough to carry my wheel chair and me, so I am forced to stand on one foot while she carries my heavy wheel chair down the stairs and over the curb, and then I have to use her body as a makeshift crutch in order to get back to the chair. I finally sit back into my chair, my body quivering from the pain of such an intense excursion.
I have always believed in the cliché phrase; “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” This cliché is now impossible for me to follow. Almost everything that I “want done,” I can no longer do by myself; someone else must do it for me, and I therefore cannot expect for anything to be done right, since it would defy the grand truth behind this cliché.
I also now see a new schism in the phrase “he puts his pants on, one leg at a time, just like everyone else.” This is because even though I still put my pants on, one leg at a time, it now takes me nearly ten minutes to put pants on. I therefore think that the phrase should be amended to read: “he puts his pants on, in less than a minute, like everyone else who isn’t so handicapped that they have to sit down and stand up four separate times in order to get their pants on over their broken hip and pelvis.”
I used to be able to multitask, and do things like carry a few items at once, from one room and into another, therein saving myself time, and fulfilling the metaphor of “killing two birds with one stone.” Now I often find myself killing one bird with fifteen stones. For example, in order to get a cup of coffee from my kitchen back to the couch where I sit for seventeen hours a day, I have to crutch to my wheel chair and then wheel to the coffee maker, where I have to pour the coffee into a screw cap bottle. Then I have to pour creamer into a different screw cap bottle, and then I have to put these bottles and a mug into a tray on my lap, wheel the tray over to the couch, wheel back over to the crutches, use the crutches to stand up and move the tray onto the table, then wheel the chair, crutches in my lap, back to it’s proper place (so it does not obstruct my “crutch path” from the couch to the toilet) and then I have to crutch back to my couch so I can sit down and fix myself a cup of coffee. Basically, what I’m getting at is that by the time I’ve managed to “kill the bird,” so to speak, I’m usually too exhausted to do anything with it.
Mail time is one of my favorite moments of the day, because in addition to the care packages, get well cards, and regular correspondence I receive, I have now begun to receive countless letters from local lawyers who “really care about my accident and want to help me (or the loved one) who was injured in my accident.” They promise that they have “years of experience in helping people exactly like me to get what they truly need and deserve in hard, trying times like these”. I don’t understand how these lawyers are going to return to me my perfect, pre-accident health, a publishing contract for six as of yet unwritten novels, and a house on an island in the bay near San Sebastian, Spain.
Before the accident occurred, I had gone about ten days without drinking, and twenty days without a cigarette. My body was a picture of perfect, non-toxic health. The doctors even confirmed this by drawing about ten pints of my blood in the three days I was under their care in the hospital. Due to the pain from my injuries, however, I have been forced to consume enough synthetic heroin to kill about six and half hair metal bands from the nineteen eighties.
Another irony is that prior to this accident, I ate an apple every day…
But despite these aforementioned lamentations, I have learned a lot of positive things from this experience. For example, this accident has enabled me to avoid the much maligned bar scene! Now that I can use my injuries as an excuse to say no to any offer from anyone, I have learned only to commit to activities and engagements that I genuinely desire to partake in. For years, I have felt socially obligated to go out to bars on the weekends—but this accident has finally given me a solid excuse to stay in and enjoy a quiet, booze-free night. Of course, in place of drinking booze until I find myself staring into a toilet, all the while “wishing I could feel normal again,” now I take Oxy-Codone until I stare at the walls, “wishing I could feel normal again.”
The single most important thing that this accident has taught me is how to make decisions. Prior to the accident, I had planned on attending a nearby graduate school program in Conflict Resolution and Mediation, because all of my life, I had been so good at mediating between conflicting parties that I figured I might as well make a buck off of my inherent skill. But what I failed to realize was that mediation would never provide me with enough financial security to outweigh the emotional stress I incur each and every time I use my “empathy gene” to help others resolve their conflicts. I have recently discovered that this career choice would have been quite a masochistic life decision.
The things I most enjoy doing are reading, writing, and communicating. Since this accident, I have enjoyed communicating with more than 300 people about my experience, and I have felt truly elated, touched, and inspired by the many dialogues this accident has provided for me. I have reconnected with old friends I had long forgotten about.
Prior to this accident, my one and only dream was to write a novel and get it published. But I could never figure out how I would find the time to write said novel, edit said novel, and then shop it to someone who would actually take the time to read it and publish it. The only plan I had ever considered taking was attending the internationally renowned Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing Graduate Program at The University of Iowa, located about two hours north of my parents’ “farm house” in Fairfield, Iowa.
I actually went so far as to fill out the entire application last December, only to chicken out and never finalize the admissions process, due to an intensely embarrassing fear of rejection from one of the two things I have ever wanted to be accepted by in my lifetime (the other being NYU’s Tish School of Arts, which resoundingly and unabashedly rejected my abhorrently cock-sure eighteen year old self in the fall of 1999).
Well, this accident has taught me that on any given day, everything you take for granted can be taken away from you. I am quite lucky, when I reflect on my accident. I am fortunate because I only lost the ability to walk for a relatively short period of time, if my doctor’s prognosis of a mid-summer rehab schedule proves to be correct. But had I been hit at a different angle, or at a slightly different speed, or worse yet, had I failed to wear a helmet that fateful day, I could have lost a whole lot more than just the use of my legs.
This accident has taught me to be bold and to seize the day. I now feel that the length of one’s life is not relevant. All that matters to me in my life is that I do the things that interest me the most, as opposed to the things that seem like the safest things to do in order to avoid feeling vulnerable. Therefore, I have recently decided that the most bold and exciting thing that I can do with my life is to secure myself a spot in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at the University of Iowa. In order to best achieve my goal, I have decided that I need to move there, build some rapport with the program, and write a manuscript that will garner me a spot in their prestigious academy.
I have thought hard, and not so long about this decision, yet when I retrace the history of my ambitions, I find a bookmark entitled “go to Iowa and write” at almost every step of my life. It’s time for me to heed the call. This accident has been an exciting chapter in the autobiographical narrative of my life (it’s my favorite book, because I am the protagonist!), and since I get to write every chapter, and I get to determine the meaning behind each and every event that takes place, I am choosing to view this accident as an unmistakable sign for me to heed my inner voice’s demand to move to Iowa.
So I’m going to Iowa. And I’m going to write my novel. My parents dictated the locations of the first three chapters of my life; Chapter one took place in New York, Chapter Two was in Florida, and Chapter Three was in Northern California. Then in 1999, I chose Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for Chapter Four. I next chose Ithaca, New York for Chapter Five, and a roll of the die found me in Portland, Oregon for Chapter Six. Seen in this light, I don’t see anything odd or surprising about the fact that getting hit by a car has translated into choosing Iowa as the perfect location for Chapter Seven. And the best part about the way I dictate my own life is that if I find myself unhappy with Chapter Seven, I know that all I have to do is write a better location for Chapter Eight.
