Letting Go and Moving On Part I

Life has a funny way of giving us what we need. Whether it be necessities, situations in life, or the people that come in and out of our lives. And sometimes these things will not be the greatest of things. That is where it all comes down to choices.

I have been lucky to have some of the best friends that a girl can ask for. But that does not mean that all of them were good for me in the long run. They have all been there to teach me a lesson and yes, some of my friends that have taught me lessons are still very big in my life today, but with some others it was time to say goodbye and move on. This is my story and my way of finding closure with one of them..

The friendship with Francis started about five years ago after I had moved to Los Angeles for a year. We met through church and I noticed that she was in a wheelchair. Turned out she had cerebral palsy just like me and I would be lying if I said that I didn’t like the fact that there was someone like me around who could relate to me. With that being said though, I was quick to realize that we had two totally different ways of thinking when it came to our disabilities.

While I use a walker to help me walk in large crowds and can walk without any aids while I am at home or work and it doesn’t effect me as physically, I am fortunate that my cerebral palsy is more on the mild side. With her though, just walking around can be very difficult for her, which is why she uses a wheelchair and while she can walk without anything she cannot do it for very long without stopping, or the support and aid of others, so it is clear to me that she has a more serious case of spastic diplegia. While it is okay to not be the same in the disability department, the thing I tended to have a problem with was her attitude towards her disability.

As time went on I noticed that Francis would complain about how she hated being disabled and because of that she would wouldn’t help make her disability become any better because she didn’t do what she needed for her body, like exercise and stretching. She would also obsess over the fact that God was going to heal her, so much so she completely forgot to live in the moment. Now, don’t get me wrong, God can heal, but I believe that it will come in a time that God wants and that he wants us to live our lives in the meantime. This is why I do not focus so much on being healed and focus more on being an inspiration and living my life positively without that hanging over my head. I believe that I was created this way for a purpose and damn it, dare I say that I am comfortable with the woman that I am today. I would constantly tell her that while I understood her struggles, that it was important to work her legs so that way she could become stronger, but as time went on it felt like my words were falling on deaf ears.

As more time passed though, our friendship became more awkward, weird, and forced on her end because she started to want more attention and she would want people to drop everything so that way they would pay attention to her. By this time, I had moved back home to be with my family so I was not around to hang out as much. But when I would come back to visit with friends I would hang out with her a couple of times, and through the times that I would see her, I could tell something had changed and something was telling me it was not a good change.

I am the type of person that would do anything to help my friends and yes, I wanted to help Francis, but for the next couple of years I had to learn that sometimes you can’t help them and they have to help themselves, and this was a lesson that I had to learn the hard way.