The Road to Recovery

Warren: Okay, I wasn’t going to write today, but I have to now. You know when you just can’t get over a certain fact? You start to go through a lot of emotions. Yeah, those are called 7 stages of grief. The 7 stages of Grief: 1. Shock and denial 2. Pain and guilt 3. Anger and bargaining 4. Depression, reflection and loneliness 5. The upward turn 6. Reconstruction and working through 7. Acceptance and Hope. I’m at stage 7 right now. But, let’s take it allllll the way back to the beginning of last year. So, let’s set the scene: I was just getting ready to go into middle school. You know, it was an adjustment period. I had anxiety before this, it was just getting really bad then. I, myself, just thought it was because I was starting middle school. Ya know, no big deal, I’ll get over it eventually. Nope! My anxiety just kept getting worse and worse. Until finally, my Mom said, “Do we need to take you for counselling?” Now, obviously, I was a bit hesitant at first, it was something new. Yeah, I cried in my first counselling session. I was mad at myself for the anxiety that I couldn’t control. I know you must be thinking, “But Warren, isn’t the first stage of grief denial,” and yeah, it is. You have to realize, that the stages of grief are not set in stone. So, if my first stage was anger, that’s just what it was. Anyway, on to what I was I was grieving about. I was grieving about how different I felt because of my CP (cerebral palsy). My CP made me feel like my legs didn’t have any use. I remember my exact quote, “Why do I even have these legs if they don’t do anything? I might as well cut them off!” But, that’s not true, my legs do have uses after all. In fact, I was just at soccer today (at the time of writing this). So, yeah, that in itself proves that my legs DO have a use. I keep telling you these side stories to back up my point of what I say. Anyway, my counselor said we would work through my negative emotions, and we did, bit by bit. I went through all the stages. The most prominent one for me was loneliness. I didn’t feel like I had anyone to relate to me. Yeah, I did a bit of bargaining, I said I’d sell my soul to be able to walk. I quickly learned that bargaining wasn’t going to work anytime soon. Eventually, all three of us, together, finally reached the upward turn. After months and months of my own pain and suffering, I finally started to reconstruct myself and work through the pain. The pain of being outcasted and alone. The pain of not being able to realize my dreams, like my dream of becoming a professional athlete one day. I could, but would it really be worth it when it didn’t look the way I dreamed it? At this point, I would rather dream about something else instead of chasing a dead dream. I slowly started to realize, everything was going to be okay, wishing to change it wasn’t going to do anything. After all that, I finally made it to acceptance. My counselor said it was a quick recovery, it didn’t feel quick. But, I guess in counseling terms, that it was quick. Anyway, the whole reason this blog came to be was because of a conversation I had with my Mom at dinner last night. It was a pretty long conversation, which I’m not really going to explain, because I feel like this blog is long enough. P.s. If you see this Mr. White, thank you for everything you’ve done. Seriously, I mean it. I feel like I’ve become such a better person after all you’ve done for me. So, thank you! Oh, and my Mom says hi. Leah: It was a long conversation we had over dinner. Instead of Warren just leaving it at that, I can at least give you the gist of the conversation. I was saying to Warren, over dinner, that just the same as I went through the stages of grief with his diagnosis; He has had to go through the stages of grief with his disability. Last year was hard for all of us as we watched him go through and tried to help him through his anger, depression, and loneliness. When he would cry to me and say, “I thought I’d walk one day, that I’d be able to run and play soccer. But I know I’m going to be stuck in this chair for the rest of my life.” I really hurt for him, it hurt my heart to watch him cycle through it. During our dinner conversation, I told him, the final stage is acceptance. He’s learning acceptance of his CP. I told him, now, he needs to own it, embrace it, and show everyone just how badass he is.