by Alex A.
On July 22nd 2016, my life changed forever. When we are little, our parents tell us to not touch a candle and we still want to touch it. We think it’s not going to happen to us. When far away from the candle, you feel like you can handle the fire but once you get closer, you will get burned and you are still provoking it to happen.
That night, when I started driving my motorcycle, I released the clutch too fast, and I did not expect a wheelie, and I tried to control the motorcycle. It was very fast and my whole body was dragging on the asphalt, and I kept holding the handlebars until the impact, and that’s when I disconnected myself, and just five houses before getting to my house. My roommates found me under a construction truck. I should have listened to my parents.
Waking up at John Muir Walnut Creek ER, the Dr. told me that I will never be able to walk any more, that my life is about to change. He said that I will be a paraplegic and I didn’t know what he meant. On Monday, he was going to intervene with an emergency surgery of life or death. I felt like my own funeral. Friends began to disappear, to not show up at the hospital anymore, and the same happens at a funeral. You find yourself in a casket and half the world comes to tell you how much they love you and never again come back to visit you to show you their support, and that’s where you realize who the ones who are your best and true friends; sometimes the ones you least expect are the ones who are there for you.
After five years since my accident, I’m learning so many new things and the most important one is appreciate the small things life give me. We don’t appreciate what we have until we lose it and when we don’t have it any more is when we miss it the most. Nothing is the same or will be. But there is something that I’m grateful to this accident; it helped me to value my loved ones, be humble, to ask for forgiveness, to forgive someone who hurts me, to see how beautiful life can be, to the small details, and to value the special moments.