 Hello there, my beautiful, lovely internet friends. Do you know any other YouTubers who start their videos waving around a leg? No, you don't, which is why you should stick around. Welcome back to my channel. I am really struggling with how to start today's video because on the one hand, I don't want this to sound like a sad sob story. You know, poor Jo lost a friend the same day she lost a leg. Bless her heart. I mean, that is what happened on the surface, but I believe that there is something much deeper at the core of the story. By lost, I mean disappeared out of my life. She is thriving and doing well. I wish her all the best, but I think at the core of this is a mistake that I have made before and a mistake that you have made before. And you may be thinking, I would never do that. I would never, ever leave someone just because they lost a limb or would you? Would I? Have you? Did I? Let us dive in and discuss. But wait, there's more. First, I want to give a big thank you to our sponsor today, Hero. Hero is a very comprehensive medication management service that frees patients and caregivers from all of the headaches that come along with managing medication. Like taking prescriptions on time, refilling prescriptions, and more through their device and the connected app. Their reality is about 50% of people who are given prescription medications do not take them as prescribed. Whether that is forgetting, taking too little, taking too much, it can be very difficult to manage. This leads to over 100,000 preventable deaths every year. Hospital readmissions and so much more. The stats are not great, but those who are using Hero as their medication management solution have a 97% adherence rate, which, if you're good at math like I am, is a lot higher than 50. Personally, as someone who's had quite a few surgeries with quite a few medications in my lifetime and also deals with chronic pain and chronic conditions, sometimes managing my medications. This felt like a full-time job. Hero takes in all of that brain power you would be using to manage medications yourself. If this sounds at all like something you're interested in or something that could benefit a friend or a loved one, check out the link in my description. And a big thank you to my friends at Hero for sponsoring today's video. It's time for the story, the gossip, the drama, the reason you came here. I think I got some coffee on my chin. If you're new to my channel, this whole situation began three and a half years ago. I lost my leg in October of 2018. I'll put the link to kind of the full story down below. And previous to that moment, I had a very, you know, small group of friends. I knew a lot of people, but the amount of people who I would confide in or actually really share my life with, that circle was pretty small. In that small circle of friends, we shall call her Mary. Mary and I met when we were like 20, so it's almost a decade ago at this point. I thought she was very cool. She was a lot of things that I was not. And even as kind of our group relationship broke off over the years, I always maintained a pretty close relationship with Mary. I valued her in my life. I know she valued me in her life. I drove hours to see her more than once when she was going through a breakup or something substantial happened. We were there for each other at a lot of, I believe, important moments. As adult friends do, we might go months without chatting, but we would always end up calling each other or seeing how the other one was doing, right? But from October 11th, the day that I walked into the hospital onward, I never heard a single word from her ever again. And I mean like a single word, not a text, not a phone call, not a comment on a post, not a like on an Instagram photo. I don't know, like literally dead silence, nothing. And if your first thought is, was she okay? Did something happen to her? Also a concern that I had, obviously. She was a okay. She was living her life. She was well aware of what had happened with me. And as I was going through the first couple weeks and couple months of recovering from a leg amputation, I think that this is a very immature thing to do. I would not repeat it. I would not recommend that anyone ever do this. But I just waited. I was just kind of curious. I wasn't like full of animosity. I was just like, I wonder if she's gonna call. I wonder if she's gonna say, hey, I wonder if she's gonna ask if I'm all right. I wanted to know that I mattered enough for her to like pick up the phone, right? And then time went on and went on and she never reached out. And that was something that hurt me for a long time because there wasn't any like context or explanation. We were great and then we were done. Honestly, that hurt. I thought about it from time to time. I often thought about calling her or reaching out and being like, what the heck dude? We were friends. I lost a leg. You couldn't say get better soon. I mean, not like my leg was gonna grow back and get better. But I mean, like you couldn't say I hope it went okay or like, hey, how's it going? So what was going on? Was she a crappy person? Was she just not okay with disabled people? Was it too much for her to deal with? Actually, that is where I'd like to pause for a moment. And I wanna share with you a story along these lines that puts me in the other shoes. That puts me in a very bad light. When I was in high school, I had a very close friend. We did a lot of stuff together. We organized Bible studies together. We led things together. Like we were super close. And this friend of mine had an older brother who very unexpectedly died. Just passed away like out of the blue, out of nowhere, just gone. And we were both like 21, 22 at the time. He was dating someone, you know, our lives were going the directions they were going in but we were still friends. And I remember going to his brother's funeral and seeing him there and hugging him there and you know, talking to him. And then I did something that I deeply regret which was to say to myself, you know what? I can't imagine what he's going through. This has to be so much. I don't wanna say the wrong thing. I don't wanna make it worse. You know, I know that he's with his family a lot right now. I'm gonna wait, you know, give him time to process this. I don't wanna mess it up. This is awful. So I'll just stand back. You know, in my mind, you reach out to me if you need anything. That's what it was in my head, right? Like in my mind, I was taking care of my friend by giving him space. The reality of that situation and other ones that I have found myself in was that I was really uncomfortable with grief, with this thing that I had no way of understanding. I was uncomfortable with the discomfort. So I opted for saying and doing nothing. We've like touched base once or twice throughout the year but knowing what I know now, the story that I told myself of, you know, I'm gonna give him space for him was really just shielding me and allowing me to continue to live my life without wrestling with this thing, without feeling this massive loss with him. I had the convenience of being able to move on with my life and he had to live that. He had to feel that. That is one of the deeper regrets of my life. And there have been a couple other situations in my life that have come close to that. And I've tried to learn from everyone. I've tried to identify when I'm just uncomfortable, right? When I don't know what to say, I don't know what to do, which is valid. And I think a lot of us come to the conclusion of like, if you don't know what to say, don't say anything at all. But then I found myself in the shoes of that person. I found myself as the person dealing with something incredibly uncomfortable and life-changing that other people didn't know what to do with. I have no idea why she did what she did but perhaps it was for the exact reasons that I didn't reach out to my friend after his brother died. Maybe she was giving me time and space to process and thinking Joel reach out, you know, when she needs me, when she's ready to talk and then that time just stretched on and on and it became very awkward to reach out because it's been so long. And now that connection is broken and there's hurt and weird feelings. And like I said at the beginning, the reason I wanted to tell this story was not to be like, though it's probably how I'm gonna title the video because we all know how YouTube works. You know, my friend left me the day I lost my leg. Isn't that so sad? It was so sad, but in reflecting on it over the last couple years, I realized I have done the same thing or something really freaking similar to other people. If you find yourself in the position of backing away from someone who is going through something substantial because you don't know what to do with it or because you are afraid of saying the wrong thing as someone who has been on both sides of the coin, I'd really deeply encourage you to ask them to express to them like, hey, I wanna be here for you. I've never done this before. I don't wanna say the wrong thing. Or I love you, I care about you. Do you need space right now? Do you want me to check in on you? Do you want me to wait for you to contact me? And having boundaries within that is very important. But if you care about someone, I would highly encourage you not to disappear out of their lives slowly and surely. Thinking it is the best thing for them without first speaking to them. It's funny because so often I have made videos about things people have said or things, you know, not to say, but in all honesty, if someone says something dumb about disability or amputation or trauma, for the most part, it means they're at least trying, sometimes see absolute lack of effort, the lack of communication does an equal amount, dare I say it, sometimes even a lot more than those who try and fail. I don't know if this kind of a reaction is something that everybody struggles with, but it's definitely something that has popped up again and again in my life and I have to actively push back against because it is my natural inclination to isolate myself when I'm uncomfortable. It's my default state not to say or do something when I don't know what to say or do. So I'm trying to continue to learn from this. I have made mistakes and I'm sure I will continue to make them, but I will continue to attempt to learn from them and try to do better next time, even if it's just a little bit because this stuff matters. And I'm really curious if you have ever found yourself on either side of this situation. If so, if you feel like it, I would love to hear your story down below, maybe share what you've learned or what your motivations were, what it felt like, and we can kind of all learn from each other in the comment section. And hey, on the off chance that my friend is watching this video. Hey, I hope you're doing well. I saw cool things are happening in your life because I definitely Googled you before this video and it looks like you're doing really well. And I wish you all the best. A really big thank you again to my friends at Hero for sponsoring this video. They are a service that I truly believe in. I actually use and I think would be beneficial for so many people. So whether it's for you, a loved one, a friend, a friend is a loved one. You know what I mean. Check out the link down below to check out Hero Today. To my beautiful patrons over on Patreon, thank you so much for your continued support and to you watching this video right now. Thank you for spending a few minutes out of your day here with me today, listening to my story of loss and also personal failure. I appreciate you spending your time with me. You could be anywhere else in the world doing anything else. And you chose to be with me here for a few minutes today and I truly appreciate that. I love you guys. I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next video. Bye guys.