 I don't think that I'm alone in feeling this way even though I feel alone in feeling this way and so I'm putting a message in a bottle and casting it out into the internet ocean and hoping that it resonates with someone else out there. Hello my beautiful internet friends! Welcome back to a late-night video where I should be sleeping but I'm not because I need to make sense of some things in my head that I haven't been putting into words and one of the best ways for me to do that is to try to make it make sense for other people. So thanks for being a part of this process by listening to this video. I found out a while ago that when I try to make my feelings and my brain into words that might make sense to someone else I pick up pieces that make sense to me too and things need to make more sense right now. I feel like there are a lot of things that I haven't said that I normally would like even just to myself let alone to the people in my life or to you because I feel such a sense of shame about them. By the way it's my rats making noise in the background this is going to be a rat noisy video and there's nothing we can do about it. They're having a good time I'm gonna let them have a good time. Ever since I got my new prosthetic leg after this second amputation I feel like I said this like 20 times it's been a roller coaster right like emotions are up and down and some days are good some days you know I can't use it it's just all over the place but one thing that has stayed consistent is I feel this incredible pressure to be positive about it to like not even for anyone else not for a camera not for anybody else but for me to focus on the positives and like look at I'm finally moving forward and look what I can do and I'm able to walk some days and look at this forward movement this is what I've wanted for so long. I feel so much internal pressure to not feel anything negative which when I put that into words I feel silly saying because I talk against that stuff often. I feel like I feel like there isn't room for me to have a hard time because there are so many cool movements because there's so much movement forward but if not for me at least for anybody else out there who's going through the same process this is like so much harder than anyone could have told me than anyone could have expressed to me then I can tell anyone right now I think there's this expectation or at least maybe I created it that my leg was taken away and then I went through a lot of unexpected stuff with second surgeries and then a second amputation and now I have it back obviously not you know something that's never going to be as good as as my meat leg this is what I want it right this is why I had the amputation the first place I'm able to walk upstairs and I can walk hands-free for brief periods of time and yes it's painful and yes it's confusing and yes it's like a process still but this is what I wanted I'm moving forward like I feel like there's so much pressure to be like here you made it you have it this is this is it okay you got what you wanted but there's so many things in life I would say the vast majority of things in life that are temporary even things we don't think are temporary what I've been in the darkest places in my life I was convinced I would never feel different ever convinced and I mean literally convinced I would never feel different and I did like I got through that I got to a different place I think there's so much value in recognizing that things are temporary my dad has a saying I've told it to you guys before that you can do anything temporarily like you can work a totally shit job for a little while you can be in a bad situation for a little while you know you can do anything temporarily but when things are permanent it's a little harder to deal with this is permanent I hate talking about this I hate putting into words and not like I hate it so I shouldn't do it it's I hate it so I really should otherwise I'm just burying it in the depths of my mind where it becomes very unhealthy thinking as I'm learning to walk as I'm putting on my prosthetic in the morning and going through all of the steps that that takes and taking it on and taking it off when it gets too much during the day or adding another layer of socks and trying to figure out how to make my freaking clothes work with that and yeah there are solutions but all of them take time and money and energy and realizing that this is literally forever and yes it will become a new normal and yes I would get used to it like this is literally the rest of my life there is no growing a leg back this is literally forever in simple language it hurts that this has been my life that since I was a kid I've had to deal with this in one form or another and that hurts and that makes me really sad I feel like I've done an extraordinarily good job for so many years shielding myself from the knowledge that this really is my life and I don't mean like my entire life or the entirety of anything but like this is my life because there was always like another thing there was always maybe another surgery or a procedure or we just need to give it a few months and see what happens or whatever when I had my ankle there's a way to trick my brain into being like it's temporary it's temporary it's temporary it's gonna be fine it's gonna work out and I think I was able to compartmentalize things really well into not thinking of my life like it actually was to like separating myself from the reality that I lived a very disabled life I never thought of myself in that light but now that this is permanent I feel like I'm feeling all of that pain I'm feeling the loss of what life could have been if I never fell off the horse and I feel like when I say that a lot of people will think how pointless it is to think of like what ifs because that's not life and to some extent that's true but I feel like I'm grieving the last 16 years of my life and the things that have hurt because of it and been damaged because of it like I've said before I see a lot of people's highlight reels I see a lot of other amputees doing so many cool things and being so excited about it and and I know I know that in reality things are not easy for them either I know that in reality they probably have similar moments to this but I feel so weird and wrong and like fundamentally broken for not just being happy about this just to be clear there's absolutely nothing wrong with posting things you're excited about that's awesome it just means like it's one of the reasons why I wanted to make this video especially at this point where things are going well and I'm moving forward is to acknowledge the fact that it doesn't mean that it's suddenly all sunshine doesn't mean that things are fixed it just means that I feel like I have a shot at finding a new normal now which I'm grateful for I don't know how to do this I don't know how I am doing this I don't know how anyone does this but it's like anything else in life where you just keep going to bed and waking up and you figure it the frick out maybe part of it is I legitimately just want to be happy I just want to be excited about the exciting things and not have it tainted or polluted by the heartbreak that I feel and the grief that I feel I almost get to the point where I feel physically unwell before I post videos like this I talk myself out of it and I talk myself into it enough to actually hit the go public button and generally what happens is I am convinced everyone's going to tell me that I'm ungrateful and dumb and emotional and I should pull it together and things that no one says and then what actually happens is I receive a ridiculous amount of beautiful support and more than that so many people saying they felt the same things so on the off chance that you felt similar things in your life regardless of what the circumstances were because I certainly don't think you have to be dealing with amputation to experience any of the things that I've talked about know that there's more than one of you out there feeling that same way I don't think that I'm alone in feeling this way even though I feel alone in feeling this way and so I'm putting a message in a bottle and casting it out into the internet ocean and hoping that it resonates with someone else out there I know I'm up to this task I know that I can do this I know I'll find a way through I know I'm a very resilient person and I make choices to persevere and I still will I always will but along with that this is one of the most bizarre experiences of my life and I don't know what I'm doing and I feel so lost and I'm not sure how I'm gonna get through it or what life is gonna look like and I'm scared and sad and by putting all this into words I think that's one step closer to me maybe allowing myself to feel the sadness so it can run its course and say what it needs to say and then go on its merry way if you've made it this far thank you for listening there's a saying I joke around with my friends a lot whatever we're doing where I say onward to victory so onward to victory my friends I love you guys I'm thinking of you and I will see you in the next video bye guys