Two Years Ago..

I like to plan out how I think my life will go, my dreams, future goals, and that’s exactly what I did during 2019. I had a plan; graduate grade-school, go on a grad trip, spend the summer having sleepovers, pool parties, and I was especially excited to make it to high school. But, turns out life had other plans. Because that year, I never went on my grad trip, never had sleepovers or pool parties and well, I never even made it to high school either. Instead I had my whole life turned suddenly upside down all in one day…May 19th.

The weird part is that I don’t remember a single thing. That morning I woke up breathing normally with a loud voice, operational left lung, mobile left leg, swallowing without issues and by the end of the day, quite the opposite. Any moment from May 19th afternoon to May 22nd, I have no recollection of. The only reason I know what happened during those days were from people telling me. I’ve done a lot of research on this and sometimes when you go through a traumatic experience, your mind sometimes blocks out the memory as a defence mechanism – which pretty much explains it.

I’ve had a long time to think about life. It’s such an interesting concept. We wake up each day never knowing whether it could be our last.  One of the scariest things is also one of the simplest things. Time. How much time do we really have left? Everything always comes back to time. Did we have enough time to make our life the fullest it could be? How much time do we have left with the ones we love? The loss of time is a terrible thing; and unfortunately for us, it will only keep running out. That’s why we can’t dwell on the things we can’t change. The words that we can’t take back or the missed opportunities we didn’t take. With everything that’s happened, I never know when my last day will be. That’s why I try to stay positive and live life.

Instead of looking at a bad situation and thinking about all the possible things that can go wrong, I decided no matter what, I didn’t want this time in my life to be remembered as a bad memory. That’s why I challenged myself and made sure there were happy moments to be remembered.

I used to think I didn’t have a choice. I thought why did this have to happen to me? I never asked for any of this. And eventually I came to realize, I did have a choice. I chose to step on that motor bike. I may not have understood the consequences in that decision and yet something as simple as deciding whether or not to ride a motor bike happened to be the current most important deciding factors of my entire future. It was the output in a series of spiralling events that eventually became my normal and it’s crazy to think that if I didn’t make that decision, I would be living a completely different life right now. 

I was initially going to write about the specific details of what happened during this day, two years ago, but I don’t think I’m ready for that yet. I did however want to thank all of the incredible people that have impacted my life and reached out. My family, friends, EMS, Firefighters, Doctors, Nurses, and therapists, I truly couldn’t have made it through the tough times without you.

-Zoe ❤