Betsy sits in her wheelchair and she is thinking whether to go for a walk to the groceries or not. She doesn’t really need anything specific but she just came back from her annual doctors check up and her back is getting worse instead of better. She needs to move, walk, be fucking vertical and fight with gravity as much as she can or she will be in a chair with wheels for the rest of her life. Which might be a while given that she is only 25. But she is just so bored out of her brain.
Not bored at the idea of walking. Walking is anything but boring. It is agony. It is pain. Pain and then some more pain. But she will suffer all of that as she has been for the last 6 years. Well maybe she has slacked a little bit due to her intense studies of the last months but overall she is very serious about exercising her body. No, the boredom comes at the idea of a useless walk to the supermarket, just to get some exercise. And not going? She pictures it in her minds eye as sitting where she is now as she is now. Plus the bad feeling of not having done what she wants to do for her body.
Her phone buzzes in her lap.
‘Girl, guess what!’ Her friend Joan’s voice thrills with excitement. Betsy reels a bit with the contrast.
‘I got the job. I got the fucking dream job!’ Betsy feels herself flood with exuberance and joy.
“You kidding me! That is great! So awesome! So the management was decent?’
‘It is. And they are. And I need to be in my car in one minute exactly. Tell you more later. Just wanted to say thank you for helping me see I was stuck in thinking I needed to choose between two bad options. If it hadn’t been for you forcing me to consider what I would truly wanted, I might right now have been working at that horrible place!’ Can you imagine that! And how much I love you little B!’
‘Well, sure I ..’ but Betsy is talking to a dead line.
She sits there, phone still held in front of her mouth, a huge grin on her face. That’s right. That’s fucking right! The ‘freedom on the other side of two bad options’ lecture she gave her friend a few weeks ago. How great to get it returned to sender, now of all times.
She wheels over to her laptop and clicks open a browser screen. She is going to buy a standing desk that can move up and down so she can at least do some of her student work vertical, aikido-ing with gravity. And she is going to find herself a companion to have regular walks with. Maybe a fun old person who can use the company and the exercise, has a sense of humour and is willing to listen to her talk about her studies. Yeah so she has another opportunity to move the stuff into her long term memory. She makes her wheelchair spin a quick little circle in front of her desk and sticks her hands in the air in victory. Isn’t freedom a wonderful thing?
Picture credits: Pexels – SHVETS production