Being Content

I started my journey to contentment with a counsellor. The counsellor and I were together for a long time and I miss her desperately. I long for this companion from time to time and her counsel all the time. Thank you to this person for giving me the tools to live, for that gift for your friendship for your love I am eternally debated.
Becoming content being content isn’t a one diminutional thing. As I’ve waled this road I’ve learned more and more to be content is a multidimensional thing. When I stopped lying to myself about being disabled it changed everything in my life; it changed all of my personal relationships, it changed my professional aspirations, it changed my views on myself and my hopes and dreams.
I continue to struggle with my disability and being “accepted”. I feel like I have to prove myself all the time in all the things that I do, I fell like I have to demonstrate my abilities, I feel like I have to be better then everyone else, to be the best of the best, to have my disability ignored and be accepted in the things that I do. To be able to say as I used to that my disability is no big deal it only means I can’t drive. What a lie, worse everyone knew it was a lie, including me. Truthfully most of the time i don’t know what impact my disability will have on life. I have to try to do something before I can tell you if I can’t do something. I have to work through a process of accommodations to see if I can meet the “thing” halfway changing the conditions of the test until. Either doing the “things”, not in the way you might expect but the “thing” is done nonetheless. Or determining nope can’t do it, and moving on.
I continue to struggle with and be frustrated by people who feel entitled to determine or define my abilities based on their own experiences. Where I have to perform like a circus dog waiting to get a treat. Its worse really as their offer is a lie it’s merely an empty promise of a treat not even offering a click on a clicker but offering nothing at all.
I continue to struggle with the “who am I?”, with the “this is what I dream”, with the “this is what I want to do”. To this day I don’t feel that the things that I want, the things that I am, the things that make Kyle individual and unique, matter. I feel trapped continually trying to prove that I can do anything you can do even though I have a disability. Being trapped permanently in the hell of “anything you can do I can do better”. I’ve learned to accept the things I can and can’t do and also accept the thing you can and can’t do. I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter as we all have our own talents and gifts. The equation of can’t and can is different for all of us anyway. Coming to the calming realization and truth that we are all disabled or we all will be. I no longer have to be better than you to ensure that my disability isn’t an issue with you. I no longer need you to be inspired by me. I only need the opportunity to try.
I felt I had to be the best of the best doing things where it was safe where it didn’t matter if I was disabled. Doing things that didn’t matter to me, managing the risk managing the potential impact and pain to myself. Limiting exposure to life so much that none of it mattered to me. At that moment in time at that precise instant in eternity nothing else mattered to me but me. In that instant that lasted an eternity it was get busy living or finish dying.
The worst of it being the impact I’ve had on others. Competing with them trying to do the things that they do and do it better. The lack of respect the lack of appreciation I’ve had for others and their own abilities. Peace has come un-expectantly, peace has come from my accepting you and what you can do. Seeing and appreciating what makes you individual and unique.
I’ve come to understand that there is indeed a hell on earth when you deny yourself when you chose not to embrace what matters to you. Where you play it safe, not exposing your true self. Where you choose to give yourself up and in doing so start to die. A living death in hell eternal, I have been to hell and I have chosen death.
I’ve come to understand that being content isn’t a point in time exercise the results and impact of which last a life time. Instead being content is a constant due diligence constantly performing the litmus test of the ongoing choice to choose. I continue to choose life.
I understand the resentment of those on the other side of that fateful decision of mine to live. I understand the bitterness and anger directed at me that potentially everything I was everything I did before was all a lie Its easy for me to say it wasn’t but everyone needs the opportunity to figure out for themselves what is real and what isn’t. I know I have taken the opportunity to review the relationships, the accomplishments, the identities I’ve had in my own life. Some of these things have survived scrutiny somethings haven’t. For those of you from my past I can assure you that the love I shared with you. The friendship I offered you. The joy I had for the wonderful gift of experiencing life with you was real. Even in the movies they acknowledge that all you can take with you is the love and all you regret is the love you hadn’t shared, it’s so true.
Decision are such wonderful things they are doors in the fabric of space and time, in life. You don’t know what is waiting for you on the other side until you make a decision. Decisions are like death once you make them you can’t go back you can choose to return but you will always know what’s on the other side of that door. Your innocence lost forever.
When my friend from the past told me that others might think I was lying about other things besides my disability if I wouldn’t disclose or acknowledge my disability. He didn’t continue on to tell me that the people that might think I was lying not only included those I was connected to professionally but everyone in my life with any kind of connection to me, including me.
When I started this journey of becoming content I didn’t know it would impact everything in my world professionally personally and totally everything to do with me. I didn’t know it would be a continual state of being I didn’t know that this is what it meant to be alive to be living. I continue to choose life.