A different version of you exists in the minds of everyone who knows yoU. what version do you see?
When I was 2 years old
my parents took me to the Shriners hospital for crippled children, to get prosthetic legs made. At the time, the legs were partly made of wood and had a swinging "door hinges" for knees. They were not very practical, and my parents didn't ask me if I wanted legs. They simply believed that "legs" are what I needed to fit in with everyone else and that learning to walk was important. But no one stopped to think if I should wear legs. It seems people with legs never ask the question, "Why wouldn't everyone want legs?" Well, I'll tell you...
Amputee children grow out of prosthetic legs like other children grow out of shoes
...tight prosthetics hurt a lot more than tight shoes! Throughout my childhood, I made frequent visits to the hospital to get my legs adjusted or to get a new pair made. In 3rd grade, the doctor recommended I have surgery on my stumps so that the prosthetics would fit better. My single parent father had to leave me in the hospital for 3 weeks until I was fully healed while he worked and cared for my brother. By the time I was in 4th grade, I had gone back and forth from the hospital so many times I lost count. We often had to travel great distances to get to the nearest hospital for children's prosthetics. On average, I would fly to Los Angeles 4 times per year for adjustments. Whenever I outgrew a pair, which would happen every 18 to 24 to months, I'd have to spend another 3 weeks in the hospital while they made a new pair.
In 5th grade, I begged for this cycle to end. I didn't want to miss anymore school, and I didn't want to wear these painful legs. I just wanted to be a kid. I was using a skateboard most of the time, and the doctors decided, with my parents, that a wheelchair would be a better way to keep me safe from being stepped on in junior high. So I got a wheelchair for the first time at age 11, and it was a big change. Not only did I like being in a wheelchair, but I was also easier to get around than on legs or on a skateboard.
But then vanity and insecurity caught up with me
...a wheelchair had its own issues, too. I was still visibly disabled, and kids can be cruel. I didn't enjoy being stared at and hearing kids yelling, "Look at that boy without legs!". It was devastating to my self-image. All I wanted to do was hide my body from their judgment.
By 10th grade, I decided I needed legs again because I desperately wanted to fit in, and I thought that hiding inside these plaster and metal shells would make the pain stop, but instead the pain wasn't coming from other people, now it was coming from the legs themselves. I was hurting from walking around high school - sometimes tripping and falling over, and using my hands to brace the fall.
I thought wearing legs would allow me to drive a car and date girls . But really I was seeking self-acceptance by looking for it in other people. I thought wearing legs would give me back the control I had lost from allowing people to push me around in a wheelchair.
What people don't tell you about prosthetics is how much they suck
Prosthetics are heavy and uncomfortable. They break down. Your stump changes size. The batteries die. The feet break. You have to clean them regularly, or else they smell. So many things happen that make prosthetics not worth the effort. Not to mention, you have to go to the clinic to get them fixed like a car, which is expensive. My last pair of legs cost me a $5000 deductible with insurance and can run about $40,000 without insurance.
If I told you that wearing prosthetics was making my legs blister, my hips sore, and hurting my wrists every time I fell down, you might ask me, "Why are you more afraid of being looked at in a wheelchair than you are afraid of hurting yourself? Why are you ok with physical pain more than emotional pain? Are you trying to fit in with able-bodied people? Are you trying to hide the fact that you don't have legs?" These are really good questions. The reality is, I only have two fingers on one hand, and I walk with a limp! I'm not hiding anything from anyone. Why was I so ashamed to be me?
The answer is FEAR...
Fear is the worst four-letter-word in the English language. Fear is what fuels so many of the decisions we make in our lives. We fear rejection. We fear change. We fear becoming stuck. We fear being seen as a boy without legs that can't even look a girl in the eyes, who can't dance, who can't go up a flight of stairs, who can't even reach something on the top shelf. Fear drives many of us to make poor choices because we aren't thinking, What is best for me? We are thinking, How do I avoid the most pain? How do I gain acceptance? How do I stop feeling fear? And once we make the decision to avoid pain, then we fight every time to keep ourselves stuck in that choice instead of reevaluating if we are still happy with our decision.
I'm not here to tell anyone that legs won't work for them. I am only here to say, they weren't working for me. And, in fact, this story isn't even about prosthetic legs. Rather, it's about me finally coming to my senses. It's about me choosing to stop being afraid of who I am. If someone had planted the idea in my head that I could be perfectly happy without wearing legs, then maybe I could have made choices better for me. I could have saved a lot of time and money... maybe bought a nice wheelchair instead.
The first time I ever went to my office in shorts was in 2011.
I'd been with the U.S. Attorneys Office for 10 years and wore long pants to work every day... even in the summer. I hadn't told people I didn't have legs because I was afraid of letting them know I was different. I had also never been to the office in my wheelchair. I lived in fear of what people would think. So the very first day I came to the office in shorts, many of the people in my office were surprised to see that I wore prosthetics. One person commented, "I thought you had polio". Another thought I limped because of leg braces.
However, all of that changed with the pandemic.
On March 13th 2020, my office sent everyone home to telework for what was supposed to be 2 weeks but became 2 years as the coronavirus spread. During those years of working from home, I was in my wheelchair 100% of the day. I didn't see the need for legs anymore. I also focused on getting healthier. I lost 30 pounds by changing my diet and working out 3 days a week in my living room. But the biggest difference was I really began to appreciate my time with me and even began meditating over my lunch hour in my backyard.
As I began to love and care for myself more, I realized that I no longer needed to hide behind my prosthetics. They were not serving me - they were serving the idea I had that they would make me happy and protect me from people's judgement. But I realized that, either way, people were still going to judge me. My fear was the only thing keeping me from living my life in a way that made me happy. So I made a change. As they began allowing us back into the office on occasion, I started going in my wheelchair - just to test it out. The office was only at 25% capacity, so I would only go in when I really needed to be there and leave as soon as I was done. And, to my amazement, no one seemed to care. They were just happy to see me!
However, as telework lifted and I had to start coming into the office more frequently, I began to worry again. Should I wear my prosthetics legs? I tried them on, and guess what? They didn't fit. I had lost all that weight, as well as some muscle mass in my thighs. So I had to keep going to work in my wheelchair.
Yet again, no one seemed to care! A few people did noticeably turn their eyes away, but I no longer worried about peoples' reactions to my body. What I cared about more was my comfort. I was far more comfortable in a wheelchair than I had ever been dragging around those 20 pounds of dead weight. All those years, the problem, of course, wasn't the prosthetic legs nor the wheelchair. The problem was how I saw myself. The image I had of myself was distorted, and it didn't match with who I was in the mind of the people around me. Once I was able to value myself for who I was, then I could be comfortable with how others saw me, too. Once I stopped denying my disability and my identity as a disabled person, I lost my shame and embraced my true self.
I have gained so much more being a person in a wheelchair than I ever gained trying to fit in with prosthetics.
...I gained confidence, I gained adaptive sports, I gained friendships, I gained my own acceptance, I gained vulnerability, and I gained the freedom to roll around and not worry about my legs falling off or running out of power. That is who I am today. The real me is finally showing up, and I love him.
Special thanks to my wife Emily Eldredge for encouraging me to love myself and helping me edit this article for publication. Please visit her at Changelight.world
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