Road to Independence

Life sure has a way of repeating itself over and over again.  These cycles occur based off the lessons that we need to learn while we are alive.  They also happen due to choices we make.  I have learned quite a bit in my thirty years of existence.

The cycles of my life tend to have a span of fifteen years each.  The first fifteen years were spent primarily with my mother.  I visited my father on Tuesday nights and every other weekend.  My mother was the one who took care of me on a day to day basis.  Due to having Cerebral Palsy, my mother babied me quite a lot.  I did not learn basic things a toddler would know until the age of ten. 

All of the surgeries that I went through occurred during this time period of my life.  My mother passed away in January 2001.  I had just turned fifteen years old five days before the event took place.  I have not had any operations since my mother passed away.  It is rather obvious that my mother’s existence within my life was to help me obtain the strength needed to overcome my surgeries.  Once all the surgeries were finished, then there was no reason for my mother to be a part of my life any longer. 

My father became more relevant after my mother passed away.  My father did not baby me in the same way that my mother had in the past.  I was a very sheltered person when it came to financial resources.  Every time I would ask my father about paying for something big such as a car or a college education, all he would say was “don’t worry about it.”  I should have taken his words as a clue that things were not as financially sound as he made it seem.  I should have been more intelligent for my age, but I let things stay as they were without question. 

My father passed away in July of this year.  My childhood home is up for short sale, and I am probably going to end up in a place where I do not want to be.  I do not have anyone to blame but myself for this outcome.  If I would have taken responsibility earlier in life, then I would not be faced with this situation. 

My parents were sources of strength in order to help me through the tougher times in my life.  My father’s health started to decline once I started pursuing my own freedom.  My first big step to achieving independence was coming out as transgender.  I got my name changed during the summer of last year.  A few months prior to this event, my father went to hospital for blood sugar issues.  I started to become more spiritually aware in February of this year.  As I became more spiritual, my father’s health went even further downhill.  As I became more independent, my father became worse.  This situation is very reminiscent of what happened after I went through all of my surgeries. In other words, after I achieved my independence from a physical standpoint, my mother’s health declined, and then she died.  Once my independence was strengthened emotionally and spiritually, my father passed away. 

Independence is the key word that sums up my life up until now.  One could also use the word freedom in my case.  My parents were used as a source of strength until I achieved my freedom.  Once a particular stage of independence was reached, then there was no need for a particular parent to play a role in my life. 

The first half of my life was geared toward achieving my freedom.  I am going to use the second half of my life to heal the pain of others in order to help them find a gateway to their own personal freedom.   I understand how hard it is to achieve freedom on various levels, and I know that I have the ability to help others in a big way.  This is going to be a rather difficult mountain to climb, but it will be worth it in the end.  I will feel a lot happier once following my life’s purpose.     

Finding Your Life Purpose

Finding one’s life purpose can seem rather difficult when he or she is trying to grow as an individual.  One needs to explore him or herself to a great degree before a calling of some sort can be found found.  I have come to realize what my own purpose in this world is due to examining the events of my life.  I also examined my brother’s life as order to see if I could figure out his main purpose for living as well.

Throughout all his life, my brother has always done something with his hands.  When my brother was eleven years of age, he built a guitar out of a K'nex construction set.  He then started playing a real guitar two years afterward.  When my brother first moved out of the house with his girlfriend at the time, he got a job as a construction worker.  Even if he did not like this particular job, it still falls in line with the rest of the events in his life.  Once my brother moved to York Pennsylvania, he got a job as a mechanic working on cars.  My brother then became a parts dealer after he stopped working as a mechanic.

The events in my brother’s life all seem very similar to a degree.  They all have to do with building something in some way shape or form.  My brother’s life purpose is to be a builder.  I am not necessarily saying that he should consider a career in architecture by any stretch of the word, but it is clear that his life purpose deals with something on a physical level using his hands to a great degree.

My life purpose is rather easy to see when one looks at the events that have taken place over the years.  I was born with a condition known as Cerebral Palsy.  Cerebral Palsy is a form of brain damage that happens at birth.  The damage to the brain  affected all four of my limbs  I went through a lot of surgeries when I was a toddler.  My physical development suffered quite a bit due to my condition.

  I have always had a sharp mind.  I played a lot of videos games as a child, and this is how I built up my memorization skills.  I memorized the movesets for characters in games such as Mortal Kombat 2, Killer Instinct, and Street Fighter 2.  I am sure memorizing the multiplication tables also helped me build my mental abilities.  Because I developed the ability to memorize patterns early in life, my mind is wired to remember a lot of things right off the bat even when I do not realize what I have gained on a conscious level.   

I always did well in school due to my good memory.  My mother thought that I was some kind of whiz kid because of how good I was at the basic multiplication tables.  It is interesting that I am terrible at remembering the rules for higher level of math, which include Algebra, and Geometry. 

I went off to community college, and then transferred to a university once I finished grade school.  I then got a job for an online website writing about video games.  After I left that position, I looked for work in a different field.  I scored a few temp jobs before becoming a call center representative.  I was hired by the company to put papers in folders for a meeting at the Baltimore Convention Center regarding gay rights.  In other words, these packets that I was putting together were made to bring awareness to issues surrounding those who are gay. 

My next temp job was at company called LearnItSystems.  The owners hired contractors to make sure that these portable hard drive devices worked for use by students with disabilities outside of the classroom.  The devices had educational programs on them to assist the students with homework.  

I finally got a job at the call center within BGE.  You could say that I "taught" the customers about their bill and other services, but that is giving the company too much credit.  That position feigns interest in the well-being of others from a utility standpoint.  The position at the call center helped me become more self-aware of who I was as a person. 

If a person looks at my life as a whole, one would say that I am "teacher" of some kind that was born to assist others reach their full potential.  The surgeries that I went  through taught the doctors more about my condition and how to treat it.  I have been teaching everyone my whole life about not judging a person by how he or she looks.  I spent a lot of my inside some of type of academic facility.  The part times jobs that I got from temp agencies leaned towards educating others about certain things.  The job at the Baltimore Convention Center was about teaching others about gay rights.  The job at LearnItSystems was about helping people with disabilities learn better through the use of technology.  These hard drives with programs were made to help teach students.  My job at the call center does not educate anyone about anything.  I did expand the awareness about who I was as an individual from working here, so I cannot say that this position is entirely negative.  If I never obtained the job at the call center, then I never would have found my calling in life.  Sometimes a person needs to go in the opposite direction of his or her path in life, so that he or she can correct present mistakes in order to live more fulfilled in the future.     

At the end of the day, a person's life purpose is not as difficult to find as it seems at first glance.  It is quite obvious what my brother should do with himself.  The same can be said for me as well. Confusion only arises when people try to fight what they are naturally inclined to do.  Once we all accept what we came to this Earth to accomplish, then things will fall into place. 

Difficulties with the School System

Going to school can be hard for anyone.  The classes can be quite boring.  The food in the cafeteria barely passes the standards imposed by the FDA.  Puberty has started, and you would rather focus on those changes rather than sit around finding the hypothetical value for X.  As a person who is gifted with Cerebral Palsy, I had some extra hoops to jump through in order to receive a proper education.

I cannot physically write as fast as those who are able-bodied, so taking notes down was rather difficult.  The schools were not very understanding of my needs whatsoever.  My mother tried to get each school to purchase a laptop for me to use, but the response as to why I could not have one was the same every time.  Each principle would say “A laptop is not in the school’s budget.”  The only option available to me was a one to one assistant. 

Most of the assistants that I had were not that terrible.  Looking back at everything now, they are the ones that got the short end of the stick.  These people only received about $7.50 an hour.  The amount of note keeping in middle school was ridiculous.  Teachers would actually grade your notebook for how organized it was.  My assistants always helped keep everything in order.    

The one to one assistant solution also carried over to high school as well.  I did not have the exact same person throughout my grade school career.  It was a different person every year.  I did not achieve complete scholastic independence until after I got my diploma and moved on to college.    

The only time I did not have an assistant was when I was in the sixth grade.  The middle school I went to put in me in the self-contained classroom with those who were mentally challenged.  The school was judging me based on the negative stereotype surrounding those with physically disabilities.  Not every person born with physical challenges has problems with his or her mind.  The principal only put me in a self-contained classroom in order to cover her own butt in case anything happened to me. 

Hopefully my time in grade school changed the lives of others.  Maybe I inspired some policy changes in the school system.  I doubt that this is the case.  The school system seems to be too big for any change to occur in a short amount time.  All anyone can do is try to make a difference, and then wait to see how things unfold. 

Are Concerts Worth it?

Concerts are always a difficult experience for anyone with a disability.  It is never a great idea to be in a room hundreds of people all crunched together.  Someone always gets hurt every time a gathering such as this takes place.  The bands that I saw firsthand were not that memorable.

The first band I ever saw live was the pop punk artist Green Day.  The band’s fourth album Insomniac had just come out a few weeks prior to this show.  I remember tickets being sold for fifteen dollars each.  I was only nine years old when this was happening, so my chances of actually seeing Green Day were rather slim.  This concert also took place on the first Monday in November of 1995.  I thought that there is no way my parents would let my brother and I go to a concert at all let alone on a school night.  The worst thing that could happen was that both parents tell me that I could not go. 

Things do not turn out how I am imagined in my head.  Both of my parents actually said that I could go to the Green Day concert.  I am sure that they were aware that this would be a one-time thing.  My brother and I even got to stay home from the school the next day.  Our father would be the one to take us to the show.  You could not be that with a stick. 

The concert was held at the Baltimore Arena.  I came to the concert in a wheelchair.  The security checked my body up and down for harmful substances; however they never bothered to check the book bag that I kept on the back of the chair.     

All three of us sat in seats that were pretty far from the band.  The members were a bit hard to make out, but the show was a blast.  Green Day played all of their hit songs at the time.  The set included tracks such as Basket Case, Geek Stink Breath, Welcome to Paradise, Longview, and She.  The only incident I remember occurring was a girl in the mosh pit being dropped on her head.  She must have been crowd surfing. 

I did not go to another concert again until the January of 2001.  This concert was just full of local punk bands.  The show took place in Towson.  The temperature outside was around twenty degrees on the night the outing.  My brother found out about this concert through some friends.  We showed up quite early for the show and had to wait about an hour before security let everyone inside the bar.  They stamped the hands of everyone who was too young to drink. 

The show began, and it was loud as can be.  There was no assigned seating like at the previous concert.  The place was just a huge mosh pit.  I was in a wheelchair during the duration of the gig.  I almost got knocked over quite a few times.  I became more nervous about being tipped over after each bump from another individual.  The show finally ended, and everyone went home. 

I also went to another concert up by the Salvation Army in Westminster during March of 2001.  The setup was very similar to the last show.  There were no actual seats whatsoever.  The entire place was once again one big mosh pit.  People came in contact with my chair a lot more frequently this time around.  One person almost knocked the chair over completely.  Most of the music was pretty good.  None of the bands stood out in any way.  I eventually went into the back room to sit in a chair away from everyone else.  I was not able to see any of the bands from this room, but I did not care anymore.  I just wanted to be safe. 

After going to three concerts during the first fifteen years of my life, I realized that live shows just are not for me.  I had the opportunity to go to a Pennywise show about a month ago.  I turned this down because I was afraid of getting hurt.  I do not avoid many things due to fear, but concerts just do not sit well with me at all.  A person needs to be a bit more careful when he or she has a disability.  Live shows are places where the ignorance level is rather high, so it is best for someone like me to steer clear of these events altogether. 

Your Intuition Knows Best

The human body can sometimes seem quite remarkable in the way that it functions.  It has standard processes such as digestion, blood circulation, and bladder control.  The body also has the ability to tell an individual how a given situation is likely to turn out.  This ability is sometimes called a gut feeling while others prefer the name intuition.  No matter which term suits you best, the ability will make you more knowledgeable and save you a lot of time in the long run. 

I ended up learning things the hard way back in September of this year.  I was searching for an apartment to stay in due to short sale happening on my childhood home.  After speaking to a local apartment leasing office in my neighborhood, I came to the conclusion that this particular community was not suitable to my needs.  This place was not accessible for those who are handicapped in some way.  The representative told me that there would be a curb that I would have to traverse, but that would be it. 

I was dead set against going to see the apartment because I knew that the experience would not end well.  I eventually went against my own advice when I received a phone call from the leasing office one day.  The initial e-mail that I received from the leasing office stated that need to have renters insurance before I moved.  I had never heard of renters insurance before, so I wrote an e-mail inquiring what this type of insurance was for.  The woman on the phone explained how renters insurance worked, and we set up a time for an apartment tour.  I decided to go and see the apartment just so I could say I that I had the experience of looking for new place.  I wish I would have listened to my gut. 

I made the appointment for the apartment tour around two in the afternoon.   The address the complex gave me is not the exact address of where the leasing office was located.  I rode around the neighborhood for fifteen minutes before I found the office.  After I spoke to one of the staff members regarding an apartment, and then took me on a tour of the apartment I would be renting.  This woman took my ID card, and then placed in a drawer until the tour was finished.  While I understand this was done for security reasons, I do not know why I was not allowed to have my card back after my identity was confirmed.  We took a ride out to the apartment in the complex’s van.  I get out of the van and went up the curb with my walker only to be greeted by a huge hill. Once I got up to the top, I then walked across three yards before I reached the back entrance to the vacant apartment.  While going across the other people’s yards, all I could think about was snowfall.  It was at this point that I made up my mind not to take the place.  The apartment itself was actually pretty good.  It had only one bed room, but it also had a den and living room.  The den was just as big as the bedroom was.  There was no washer and dryer, but the utility room was right across the hallway from where I would be staying.  The only catch was that I had to buy cards for the washer and dryer at the leasing office.  This would be difficult for someone with a disability such as mine.

The apartment tour finally ended, and I was taken back to the leasing office.  I never made it back inside the actual building.  The woman gave me back my ID card, and did not even invite me inside while I waited for Lyft to pick me up. 

The Lyft driver took forever to reach me.  This was not his fault at all.  As stated earlier, the address to the leasing office was a bit of a mystery.  I ended up hanging on to the complex’s van for forty five minutes while the Lyft driver tries to find me.  I tried to give him direction on where I was based on his location.  I eventually was picked up, and then I asked to be taken to my local diner.

My intuition gave me all the information I needed to know before I even went on the apartment tour.  I already knew from the very beginning that things would not go well.  My intuition ended up being correct.  There is no reason for anyone to hold on to another person's ID card for a long period of time.  Walking across the yards of other apartments is ridiculous.  Weather is just one issue that I would have had to deal with.  I am sure that the neighbors would not appreciate me walking across their property all the time.  I would not have had to wear my legs out standing around waiting for a Lyft driver either.  Next time I have a gut feeling, I will be sure to listen what it has to say.    

A Surgical Procedure That I Will Never Forget

Having a disability can be a huge burden during one’s earlier years.  Not only do have to learn how to overcome every day challenges that most people face, but you have to go head to head with issues that hardly anyone else knows anything about.  For me, this extra issue came in the form of a procedure that went through to fix my right leg.

In the winter of 1999, my primary doctor discovered that the ball of my hip was coming out of its socket.  I was sent to a hospital that specialized in surgeries for those who are disabled.  I met with another doctor by the name of John Herzenberg.  He claimed that the hip ball on in the right leg would need to be put back in the socket correctly, or I would face complications later on in life.  After the operation was completed, an Ilizarov would be required to be attached to my leg for three months to ensure that the ball of the hip would remain in place while my leg  healed.  The operation was performed on the thirtieth of June.

After the operation was over, there was quite a long recovery process.  The Ilizarov had pins on the side of it that went directly into my bone.  This means that my leg had wounds that could not heal until the apparatus was taken off.  I had to clean my pinholes out twice a day.  Difficulties ranged from putting on pants to using the toilet correctly.  The mechanical device was quite the monster, but it made for a good arm rest. 

It took my leg five months to heal completely after the Ilizarov was removed.  The ball of my hip still remains in its proper place to this day.  I will never forget this event in my life regardless of how much time passes.  Something such as will test the strength of an individual, but he or she be better off for the experience. 

The Infinite Power Within the Mind

The mind can be quite a tricky thing to master.  After all, no one’s mind works in the exact same way.  We all have different ways of processing information.  The way my mind works seems to be pretty rare and unique.

I have the ability to switch between the conscious and unconscious modes of my mind.  I cannot perform this task manually by any means.  My mind just knows when it is acceptable for certain modes of itself to come into play.  Because I have Cerebral Palsy, I have to hold onto objects to help me move around from place to place.  During this activity, my conscious mind is extremely present.  It needs to make sure that I do not hurt myself while I am in motion.  When I am in a more stationary position such as sitting, the unconscious mode of my mind becomes a lot more active.  Sometimes the images in my head are so vivid that I begin to talk out loud as if what I am seeing is right before me material wise.  When I am sitting at tables in restaurants, I talk out loud without realizing it.  The server then thinks that I am talking to him or her.  It is rather humorous when this takes place.  I will also begin to laugh for what seems to be no reason at all.  The truth is that there is a reason for my laughter.  The unconscious mode of my mind is going full blast creating image after image.  Since the images are extremely vivid, they seem almost like they are present in physical reality.  A lot of the time, my wicked or vulgar sense of humor makes me think of things that are just plain ridiculous.  I am surprised no one gives me any funny looks. 

The only time the conscious mode of my mind becomes more active while sitting is when something negative happens to me.  This might include, my order getting mixed up at a restaurant, a ride being cancelled, and so forth.  The unconscious mode of my mind quickly disappears leaving the conscious mode to deal with what has just transpired. 

Both modes of my mind have their place within me.  Both modes understand how to work together, and that is why my mind as a whole is my strongest asset.  The mind has the ability to create anything it wants, and it also has the ability to give an individual the ideas on how to bring something into existence from a material perspective.  Any person has to power to change his or her physical reality.  All he or she needs is a vision of some sort, and a plan for how to materialize it.     

Evolution of My Spiritual Journey

It has been almost nine months since I became aware of my spiritual awakening.  As stated in my previous post, I suffered a few bouts of sleep paralysis back in April.  I was visited by what seemed to be an evil spirit.  It told me to stop studying astrology.  This incident is what truly kick started my spiritual journey.  At this point in time, I did not understand how deep the rabbit hole went. 

During May of this year, I started to meditate quite regularly using traditional methods.  This helped me heal my body quite a bit.  I did not suffer small stress related illnesses like I used to before I started this practice.  I began to have lucid dreams to varying degrees.  I was scared as all hell the first time one of these occurred.  Eventually I got used to them over time.

Going to my job in the call center every day became rather tough.  I began to have this feeling inside that I was meant for something more.  I felt a strong need to understand myself and the universe on a deeper level.  I could not do things by the “numbers” anymore.  I did not interact an authentic way with most of the people I spoke to throughout the day anyway, so I felt like I was not doing much of anything. 

In August of this year, I started to feel some kind of strange energy in my hands.  The feeling was somewhat similar to becoming numb only with a less intense sensation.  In other words the physical sensation is not as heavy as a body that has gone asleep due to awkward positioning.  This feeling had a faster flow.  I came to understand this feeling as my energy signal.  The energy within me tends to get more intense when put my hands together to make orbs to absorb negative energy. 

My hearing also has sharpened over time.  I can hear the cat outside from halfway across the house.  I can hear a high pitched ringing in my ears twenty four hours of everyday.  When a room is completely silent, I can hear the ringing without any issues at all.  This is not because my ears were ruined by listening to loud music.  Ringing in one’s ear due to music is a sign that an individual went passed the sound threshold that he or she could handle.  The ringing in my case is most likely due to an increased sense of perception.  In other words, my ears can now pick up frequencies beyond the average hearing range.      

I hope that my spiritual awareness continues to grow in the future.  Maybe I will be able to use these traits to help people one day.  For now I will just have to wait and see what happens.