 Hello my beautiful internet friends and welcome back to Fridays with Joe's a bit of a hypocrite. This is a series that I will not be starting on my channel. Hopefully we won't see many more of these videos but I thought that this would be perhaps an important moment to share with you guys. I share like the highs and the lows and the victories and I might as well share a moment that I think I did not handle well today. Let's dive in shall we? As a content creator on YouTube, like if you put out videos about your life, if you're lucky people leave comments and I would say about 90% of the comments in this community are incredible. They spark conversation or they're incredibly kind or supportive to me, supportive to other people and it's amazing. It's great and I love this community and about 10% of the comments are comments that I don't enjoy reading that I don't like that are either mean spirited or really ignorant or gross or whatever right and I've talked in like two videos about some of the not so awesome ones. Having been in the public eye for a while now, I've kind of gotten used to a lot of the things that people will say that I don't like hearing. Most of them don't affect my day. I still don't like hearing them but they don't dampen my mood. There's one type of comment though that gets under my skin. It's a point of insecurity for me. About once a week I'll receive a comment that goes something like you're such an idiot for amputating your leg. This comes in many forms. Perhaps it's I would never have done that in your position or your stupid moron for doing that or this one which is what I received today. This comment reads I can't believe you elected to do this. It's such a painful life. At least you could have looked normal and I think the thing that gets to me about comments that like talk about my decision is the idea that like I had a ton of choice. I absolutely did have choice and that was really empowering and I'm glad for that and it is called an elective amputation but that word elective is really misleading because it's not like this is something I ever wanted to happen. I promise that I'm getting to the part where I'm a hypocrite. I was between a rock and a hard place. I was gonna have my leg amputated eventually. That was a short of an actual miracle for sure. That was a guarantee. It was just a timing thing. It was like how much longer did I want to live in excruciating pain most days? How much longer did I not want to walk? How much longer did I want to live surgery to surgery? We're still living surgery to surgery but hopefully this was the last one guys. Hopefully and I tried to make the best decision that I could. I tried to make a decision that would better my life but it's not like this is ever something that I wanted to do. When things got bad about two years ago with my ankle the most like the most that I would have with a leg was like you could say ten years but realistically like two to five so I could either do it now and have control of when, where and how or not. I promise that I'm getting to the part where I'm a hypocrite a little bit just just a little bit yes I am but I think the reason why comments like this get to me is because I am a little bit insecure about the decision that I made. I can never know if it was the right one but I choose to believe that it was the right one because it was the choice that I made right? I don't know what was on the other side of making that decision. I don't know what was on the other side of waiting and so when people suggest that this was like in their tone like it was an easy decision or something I wanted or something that I was stupid for doing or didn't think through I'm gonna be honest it's kind of a sore spot for me. We've mentioned this before so this comment came in today and my initial reaction was an emotional one I was like God I didn't like freaking choose this and what do you mean by normal looking like yeah I know that I don't look normal and no I don't love that but like I'm trying to love that I'm trying to adjust to it blah blah blah so I don't usually respond to comments like this but I responded to this one with like a two paragraph answer and I tried to be kind about it and I acknowledged I didn't know their situation and I explained why I did it which is unnecessary I think that's just me trying to justify myself which is entirely something I don't need to be spending my time doing and is probably not healthy to be doing often online but I thought about this comment a little bit further and I looked back at it after I posted that comment a couple hours later and I reread it let's read it again together shall we I can't believe that you elected to do this it is such a painful life at least you could have looked normal I think the first thing we can notice though there's no real way to know for sure is that second sentence it's such a painful life that makes me think that maybe this person is an amputee I have no idea but I'm going to go on that assumption for the rest of this video it seems that they know something about this life perhaps they are one themselves or they are close friends with someone or they have a disability and they can't believe that I made the choice to do this when I could have looked normal normal when it could have looked like an average person walking around and in my response I don't think I was snotty about this perhaps I was like appearance didn't matter more to me than living life in pain and I feel passionate about that and when people like challenge me on that I get upset but let's flip this around for a second I had the ability to make a choice I made it based on factors that mattered to me the factors that mattered to me was I couldn't do things I love I hurt all the time life was agony life was getting worse everything was a dark hole I can't do this anymore amputation was really the only hope to be able to walk without pain hopefully and the sacrifice for me is I will always look different the sacrifice is that adjustment the sacrifice is a lot of things actually but let's just imagine for a second that this person is an amputee let's imagine maybe they didn't have a choice maybe the factors that matter to them are how they look I think someone could say that superficial but it's really hard it's it's so much harder than I thought to look different than other people walking around it takes a toll to be stared at all the time it takes effort to like choose to ignore that it's weird that the first thing that people notice and know about me is that I'm missing a leg like that's hard I'm not gonna underplay that I sacrifice that so that maybe I could walk and hurt less but that's just because that's been my life experience people of all different kinds of pressures on them people of all different kinds of experiences and I always talk about how people's experiences are as broad as their personalities and completely unique and we shouldn't judge other people and I actually talk about this a lot on my other channel trauma talk which I'll also link down below about how we really shouldn't judge people for how they respond to trauma because everyone responds to it differently and I think I was being very hypocritical in how I respond to these statements and how I respond to people saying what they would have done or what they want or what they can't have or this comment that it's such a painful life could have looked normal like how could I have done this because perhaps that is the most important thing to this person perhaps that's something that is tearing them apart maybe that's something that's currently feeling like it's destroying their lives and suffocating them and I have no idea maybe I simply have a little bit easier time dealing with looking different than I do then being immobilized and living in chronic pain I was judging this person internally really harshly for their statements towards me and their suggestion at least in the tone that like they would have done something different or that I should have done something different but I think maybe I need to stop doing that and I wanted to share that with you because it was kind of a moment for me today and in a way it was a moment that sort of released pressure from me because I get upset about these specific kind of comments still and that upset left when I kind of had the realization that I got to make a horrible choice based on what mattered to me based on my priorities and I preach about that all the time but my priorities are not what mattered to someone else and I need to respect that as much as I want other people to respect it for me and I feel like I should wrap this up with some statement about how we could all do more of that in our lives and yeah we could all do more of that in our lives and I'm going to try to practice that because everyone has different experiences and everyone's personality and struggles are as vast as the ocean thanks for listening to me guys thanks for caring about me even though I am indeed a hypocrite and the person who wrote this comment I'm sorry that my initial response was to judge you and to get mad and if this is something you're struggling with I am truly so sorry I know that it's a really painful life and then it's a hard way to live and if there's any way I can help please reach out to me and let me know thank you to my patrons over on patreon who very generously support me and believe in me like you all do if you're interested in what patreon is I will leave a link on the screen and also down below where you can check it out thank you for spending some time out of your day listening to how I'm a hypocrite sounds like a great series but we're gonna end it with this video I love you guys I'm thinking of you and I will see you in the next video bye guys