The Promise: A Tragic Accident, a Paralyzed Bride, and the Power of Love, Loyalty, and Friendship (15 page)

CHAPTER 32

Keeping My Head in the Game

After the accident I had to work really hard to tackle
the mental aspect of my life—which grew to be the more challenging part. Life sometimes felt kind of lonely, though I’ve always hated the negativity that stems from that word. Since the accident I hadn’t figured out how to connect with my old friends, other than my core group of girls. I missed college, but I hadn’t figured out a way to connect with many of my college friends, mostly because it had become clear that going out was a challenge for me. Crowds were difficult to navigate and I always got so cold.

So I figured I’d bring the crowds to me. I decided I would hold a party at my house, for the first time since my accident. It was going to be a college party, though no one was actually in college anymore. I put together a list of people, ordered a keg, and set a date. I was really excited that most of the girls could make it, that we could be together again. It almost happened, but at the last minute Lauren said she couldn’t come.

Samantha and Carly came early to help set up, although we were laughing that there wasn’t much to put out besides the beer. We bought a keg, but college parties don’t have real food, so this one didn’t either. They’d driven down together and were staying the night. Once the essentials were in place, they had to quickly do their hair.

Britney came, too, with her new husband. They’d gone out to watch the ECU game for a bit at a restaurant and then stopped by. She was the person I attacked with joy when ECU claimed its first basketball championship in the CIT. The Pirates won on a three-point shot at the buzzer, no less. The entire crowd went crazy.

I invited a bunch of people—the guy friends I had in college, people I hadn’t seen in forever, and people who lived in the area. When I was in college, I had the perfect party house. It was up on stilts because it was close to a river, so I could have people over and everyone would just hang out underneath the house. I didn’t have to let anyone inside, so no mess. We had parties all the time, and I really missed that. And, to be honest, I had so many good friends from back then that I hadn’t seen since before I got hurt, and I wanted to see them.

Before the accident it was so much easier to go out, so it was nice to have people come to me and be in my environment.

It was really hard to make new friends, being injured and no longer being around people as often. In college it was so easy, because you had neighbors and you had dorm mates. People my age found friends through work or some group they were in, but I couldn’t work. So the way adults typically made friends was difficult for me.

I had friends who were nice and we were Facebook friends, but I think we would have been really close if I were able-bodied. It would have been easier for me to just drop by and visit them. I wasn’t in a position to grab lunch at a restaurant or meet up with girlfriends, which they probably did more on a whim. So it was hard. I was growing more independent, but I hadn’t developed enough confidence yet to drive on my own and just go meet up with someone. I guess that’s why my friends from before the accident were so valuable to me.

About twenty of my tight friends came to this party, and they were the ones who had been in my life for a long time. Sometimes I felt a little awkward around new people. I had become less confident because I knew people were sometimes uncomfortable with the chair. I’d met some cool people, but I got a little self-conscious about things like not being able to shake someone’s hand. I didn’t have a grip, and shaking hands was just what people did. I was sure it was noticeable and put people off sometimes. I didn’t blame people for being uncomfortable. When people meet a quadriplegic for the first time and don’t have a history with them, I think it’s really hard for them to see past the chair, and then it’s hard for me to get past the point where they’re not awkward. So it was nice, if only for one night, to feel like I was living back in the old ECU days, with crowds and a keg and a bunch of friends around me.

Carly and Samantha came into my room in their pajamas after everyone had left, at two in the morning, and we sat up talking until five. Chris just snored away in the bed; he can sleep through anything. We began talking about how we really wanted to see more of each other, saying that we should try to get together at least once a month. I needed them in my life. They brought me joy. The past was the past, and college was awesome, but these girls had kept my head screwed on straight and had become my present.

I had to come to terms with not walking, but that took a lot of mental exercise, too. I had accepted the overall situation, but I struggled a lot with body image issues, just like most women do. Mine were the same as most people’s, with some differences, like the quad pooch. I tried on tighter shirts that I used to wear, and all I could see was my belly. Since I taught aerobics before, I had a pretty good body, but my core muscles deteriorated, and I started to feel really sad when I looked in a mirror.

I actually grew jealous of lower-level injuries as well. Many paraplegics have function in their core, so they get to keep their abs. Of course their arms and hands have full function, too. I met so many paras during the first year of my injury who were so down on life because of their situation, and all I could think was,
Come on! Your hands work! You were independent within a year of your injury.

Two girls I met right after my injury were paraplegics after each was in a car accident. They had been dancers before being injured but continued to participate in wheelchair dancing. I wanted nothing more than to be able to do that. To move my arms like I used to and to gracefully use my hands. They would do spins in their chairs while popping wheelies. It was actually pretty awesome what they could do. As someone who had danced regularly, it was hard to watch, as beautiful as it was. They gave me advice once.

“Once a dancer, always a dancer,” one of them said when we were talking about it. This was true in my heart but not my reality. Sure, I was able to go on the dance floor and jam a little to the beat, but I will never do any choreographed dancing. I’m not talking about messing around. I missed dancing so much. It was my favorite thing to do, and I wished it hadn’t been taken away from me. It was the one activity I wanted back.

I was always the dancer in my relationship with Chris. I took ballroom dancing before the accident, and I loved Latin and salsa. Chris would occasionally agree to dance with me, but generally he didn’t really dance. He had two left feet, in fact. I always used to have to try to drag him out on the dance floor and say, “Come dance with me,” and I teased him by saying, “If you’re not going to, I’ll dance with someone else.” I never did. Even though he was a bad dancer, I loved dancing with him. Every once in a while when I was out with my girls, there would be a guy on the dance floor who really knew how to Latin dance, and I would dance with him. I never wanted to turn down something fun like that, although I would have rather danced poorly with Chris than well with a stranger any day.

There were people who had it worse—some higher-level injuries than me who would give anything to have the arm strength that I still had. Some quadriplegics would give anything just to breathe on their own. High-level quads want to be low-level quads. Low-level quads want to be paras. And high-level paras want to be low-level paras. I realized independence was the most significant measure, and that every hardship is relative in this world.

I had to work on not getting frustrated by how people behaved in front of me. I noticed some were extremely uncomfortable, but others were okay. I realized educating people was my job, and I started to work on landing more and more speaking engagements to help enlighten people.

I was thrilled that from the second I was injured, my friends treated me like just another one of the girls. That was always important. Some people, mostly when I met them for the first time, would bend down to get to eye level to speak to me. It wasn’t insulting if someone couldn’t hear me, but otherwise it sometimes seemed demeaning. Strangers thought that since I was in the chair, they needed to treat me like a child. Some patted me on the head and others who were my age called me sweetheart or honey, which I didn’t think they would have done if I were able-bodied. I hated being treated like a dog or a kid.

My friends never scrambled to help me with things I could do myself, even when they saw I was having a hard time. They waited to be asked, which was cool. When you help someone without asking them, it takes away the only independence they have left. If I could push myself across the sidewalk, that’s something I needed to do. Picking things up off of the ground, driving, and putting on my shirt were now all things that I didn’t take for granted. I didn’t want people taking the few things I could do for myself away from me. I had lost enough.

CHAPTER 33

Marriage

Britney got married on March 22, 2013, and I was really
excited to go to her wedding. When I got engaged, I’d known Britney for maybe eight months. We were more “going out friends” than anything else at the time, but I knew I liked her a lot. I was glad she’d come into my life. This whole new level of our friendship grew in such an unexpected way.

She’d go for a run and just swing by my house and sit on the couch for a talk. It was easy for us to spend time together, and we would go downtown and have lots of laughs. And more than the other girls, we had face-to-face time, for talking about everything, and that was really nice. It still is.

I was with Britney before her wedding. We were getting ready together.

“Are you having fun?” I asked.

“Yeah, for sure. It’s so cool to have all of these people here for us,” she said.

I agreed.

“Do you remember the night before your bachelorette party?” she asked.

I didn’t really. I remember a lot of stuff, but of course the night itself had been more memorable.

“Not really,” I said.

“We stayed up really late. You don’t remember?”

“No,” I said.

“We talked about ghosts and spirits. We were up all night.”

I loved that she had this crazy memory of that time. I loved that she remembered some really fun stuff that had nothing to do with the accident. Ghosts and spirits had been the topic of conversation, not anything else about my party.

With Britney wed, that meant she joined Lauren and me in commiserating about the ups and downs of being married. Despite the hugeness of our love story, Chris and I have had some tense moments, like any other couple.

Lauren had gotten married four weeks before my accident. Our birthdays were so close together, and then we were almost married around the same time, too. We also had similar relationships. Their relationship was easy, like ours. I connected with her on that level. I was supposed to be born on her birthday, she on mine. I was glad I was paralyzed
after
her wedding because it would have ruined her day. She was the person who had always been in my life, like family, since I was two. I don’t even remember meeting her; she was just always there.

One night, Chris and I made the three-hour drive up to visit Lauren and her husband; we all went to hang out at a sports bar near their house in Charlotte. Lauren told me that night that she’d cried at work, in front of her boss, the Monday after the accident. We also talked about how the accident had really tested my strength.

I remember sitting there during our dinner and thinking that I was actually glad the injury hadn’t happened to anyone else. I handled it. I’m a patient person. I don’t mean this offensively, but Chris is a stresser. I’m not sure he would have been as easy about having someone take care of him as I have been. He overanalyzes things, too. I thought about that as we sat there, how his traits, or anyone else’s, might have impacted their ability to deal with this situation. I’m calmer, I think.

Chris and I never really argued. Neither of us were fighters. But he misdirected his frustration sometimes, and I knew that. We had disagreements, of course, every couple does, but we weren’t the type of people to raise our voices. We never yelled at each other. Some people wondered if he controlled himself because of the injury. It was not that. He didn’t cut me any slack. There was a time when we butted heads over what I was actually doing for myself and not doing for myself. He wanted me to be as independent as possible. It was the kind of head-butting that only came out if he’d had a stressful day at work. In year two of my injury, when I was better able to handle the nerve pain but had also figured out how to do a lot for myself, I’d get lazy. He’d come home and we’d be watching TV, and I’d say, “Can you get me a glass of water?” And some days he’d get it, but on some days, he would say, “You are able to get it yourself.” He was pushing me. He’d say, “You want to be independent. I want you to live as full a life as you can.” He was right. It took me longer to get a glass of water, but I could get my own water. Absolutely.

When my body was on fire and I was in pain, it was hard. It was hard to be motivated when I felt that way. There were days when I was struggling and he’d come at me wrong. But it was a good period in time to learn, about each other and about myself. Sometimes I actually was so drained and felt so guilty about the situation that I cried. At the end of each day during this little rough patch, we’d sort it out. We never went to bed angry.

Communication helped us survive all of this. Neither of us ever held back on sharing our feelings with each other. We understood that both of our feelings were valid and that everything we felt was always okay. I believed nothing got fixed if you avoided talking about it. We resolved a lot, and I felt stronger for it. You don’t know a lot about yourself until you are tested.