disabled?

I have had to think a lot lately about what it is that I can and can not do. I am trying to prepare myself for going back to college. In doing that though, I am forced to look at some uncomfortable facts about my health and where I "lack." What are my limitations? What kind of feelings should I simply push through, and when should I just let myself be what I am? Am I truly disabled?

In the society that I've grown up in (United States-Western), it is considered a "virtue" to push through any weakness that one might have. Some popular quotes that I have heard include: "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" or "pain is just weakness leaving the body," which mirror an attitude that one should not let even natural limitations get in the way of what they want to do. It is also assumed that as human beings, we have the ability to control what happens with our bodies and our emotions. Therefore, if you simply can not do something, it is somehow your own fault and you haven't tried hard enough. Or maybe, you just don't want it badly enough.

For the past 3 years, I have had to live in the painful reality that in my early twenties, I am greatly limited by a broken body. In 2007 sustained a spinal injury without even knowing what I did to cause it and have been dealing with a herniated spinal disk for a lot longer than the average healing time period. Before I hurt my back, I didn't really ever think about the fragility of the spine. I also didn't know anyone else who had suffered from the same injury. Over time though, I have met various persons with the same problem. I know that I am not alone and there are plenty of people with much worse chronic conditions, but that doesn't necessarily keep me from struggling from day to day with how to deal with this disabling injury.

There are some days that I almost forget that my back is not healed. I don't really feel much pain, I have a good amount of energy, and I can do what I have set out to do at the beginning of that day. I tend to think more about my future on those days. I think about what I want to study and what I want to accomplish. I apply to a college in California even though I live on the other side of the country. I dream about what it would be like to learn about Anthropology and what I might do with a degree. I ask for prayer for provision at my life group, hoping that God will work a miracle with my financial situation. Then, when I go to bed, I pop a small blue pill into my mouth and swallow it with some water. If I stop to think before I turn on my laptop to get online, I realize that my life is a lot more complicated than I had been envisioning.

The next afternoon I might feel completely different. I have to sleep two hours longer than I want to because I'm so tired. It takes me fifteen minutes to keep my eyes open and to be able to get out of bed. It takes me another fifteen to relate to the fact that I need to pick out clothes to wear that day. I get angry and sometimes cry because I can't get my mind to defog enough so that I can just pick out a shirt and some jeans. After I shower and make my breakfast, I am exhausted. I don't feel like I can even begin to be ready for only three hours of work. I drink a cup of coffee, pray for strength, and drive less than a mile to my care-giving job. I drudge through the day, trying to focus on helping my Godmother, having to sit down every twenty minutes because I don't have the energy to stand. When I get back up, my legs are aching and continue to ache until I get into my bed at night. At various times throughout the day, the pain in my back jabs through the medicine that is chemically telling my brain that there is no pain. I have to pop a couple of Aleve, or lay down on my stomach for a half hour to get it to settle. Sometimes, it doesn't settle and I just have to find something to distract myself from the sharp pain running from my lower back down to my left calf. Usually on days like these, I have to cancel any evening plans I might have made, forcing me to try to explain that I just can't do what every other twenty-four year old should be able to do.

So I'm left to wonder, if its been three years so far, how much longer will I have to deal with this herniated disk? Why the heck did I ever think that I could go to California, let alone a school in my home state? What is to become of my life? I have to learn to decide through prayer what is really possible for me to do, and what I will have to defer to a time when hopefully my disk will be healed.