 Well, hello there, my beautiful, lovely, talented, and delightful internet friends. Welcome back to my channel. Thank you so much for joining me here today on Footless Joe, where I am still Footless, I am still Joe, that's my line, and I'm still missing a foot. Also, our co-host, Sophie, will be joining us, hopefully, fingers crossed for the duration of this video. And before we go any further, yes, I have fantastic mermaid hair, and I absolutely love it. I feel like a pretty mermaid, and that's all that matters. Before we fully dive into what I'm about to tell you about, I wanted to let you know that this video is brought to you by my amazing Patreon members over on you guessed it, Patreon. There's a link on screen and down below if you're interested in joining my Patreon community or checking it out, or finding out what that's all about, I would love to see you over there. This is gonna be a very unedited video. I'm gonna try to just speak and put it up because I want you guys to know where I honestly am. I sometimes feel like editing gets in the way of that. It dilutes it, editing is fantastic. I love it, I do it in most of my videos, but here goes nothing. So, I have spent the majority of my life since I was 13 onward, always having some big thing to fight against. Some big thing to battle. First it was falling off the horse and breaking my ankle and going through surgeries as a kid. Oh no, then I think 15 is when my house burned down the first time. Oh no, we got to adjust to that. And then it was more surgeries and going away to college and having to come back home for medical issues. Ah, and then more surgeries and more issues and going through significant relational, emotional, spiritual trauma and fighting my way through that. And then it was having my leg amputated. Oh my God, and then having it done again because oh my God, I didn't work the first time. And now, now we are a point in the story where things have really quieted down. And this is a day that I have dreamed about for a very long time, right? You know, like I have not been a fan of being in pain. I've not been a fan of going through traumatic things. But I've noticed there is a significant level of discomfort that I have about this. When you have grown up in chaos, when you've grown up with bombs, kind of hypothetically, theoretically exploding around you, you dream a lot about that not being the case, about like living a simple, peaceful life and being able to actually like take a breath for a moment and oh God, what would normal be like? All those lucky people with their normal lives who aren't like fighting to survive one thing or another all the time. But now that I've reached here for the time being, I'm not gonna jinx it, for the time being and I've been here for a little while, I realized I don't really know who I am outside of struggle. Like I don't know who I am outside of pushing and fighting and trying to persevere and win because the majority of my identity has been forged that way. And so now that I'm in this phase of life where my leg is basically okay, it's working out, we got some ups and downs, we got some exciting stuff with it, but like generally speaking, it's all right. My mental health is something I am continually working on, taking time for, trying to take care of myself, but I am not in any kind of dangerous mental place right now which I'm extremely grateful for. I am so uncomfortable. Like I don't know what the point is, which is funny because they've often said that about when everything is so difficult and so trying and hard and painful and hurtful, like what's the point, right? But having struggle gives you a reason and it can give you a purpose. I often see like cute little signs like find purpose in the pain and it's like people's mottos and stuff like that. And I very much believe that, I very much adhere to that, that you can find purpose in the difficult things that you're going through. And I've not struggled with that idea for a long time. I find purpose in the pain. I think it's the best thing for me that I can possibly do when rough things happen. I find, I create meaning for them. I create a reason why they mean something to me and what I'm gonna do about it and how I'm gonna better my world or my relationships or myself. But when you're just back to living life, just living life for the first time and I can't do math off the top of my head but almost two decades, I don't know who I am or what I'm worth. And I think that's probably the bigger issue. I feel like a lot of how I view myself in a positive light has been forged through the fire. Like, I know that I'm a strong person. I know that things will happen in the future that will be extraordinarily difficult and I won't know how to get through them but I will somehow find a way because that is who I am. Even if in some moments I don't feel like it. Like I know that's who I am but I don't know who I am outside of that battle, outside of that war. I feel like I have learned a lot about using my voice through difficult times, which again, I'm very grateful for and I've spent a lot of time working on and nurturing but the peace and the quiet thing, I don't know what to do with. I suddenly feel like a fraud for talking about anything, mental health related or really like talking about anything even here on this channel because I'm like, I am not actively in emotional distress fighting against something so who am I? Am I no one? Am I meaningless? Am I purposeless? Like, have I never actually found the point after all? And it's not that I'm wishing for hard things because I'm not. I'm very grateful that I am not in extraordinary amounts of pain. I'm very grateful that I'm not presently facing any other surgeries. I'm very, very grateful that my mind is in a place that is reasonably relatively clear but I don't know what that means for me because all I have ever been, at least in years that I can remember, is a fight. And I wanted to put this into words while it was heavy on my mind because I don't think I'm the only person who feels this way. For those of us who have grown up in chaos or trauma or survival mode all the time, I think a lot of us think about the day that it's not gonna be like that anymore or dream about it or convince ourselves it isn't possible because it seems so far fetched that life could calm down and be normal and not hurt so much. And we wish for that, we ache for that. It's weird to realize that I'm 29 and I don't really know anything about just living life. I feel like I know a lot about like, not a lot, that sounds like much more than it is. I feel like I know enough about perseverance and difficult situations. I feel like that's my strength, right? I don't feel like just being a person is my strength. And I think in some way, I've also tied a lot of my job, a lot of my work to this struggle, right? Because YouTube and social media and hopefully in the near future of public speaking as our world hopefully opens back up, what I talk about is like difficult things. And I fully realize that I can do that when I am not in active distress, but I just got like crazy dizzy. Let me pause for just a moment. My therapist always tells me to like listen to my body and pay attention to its signals. And I almost wonder that getting super dizzy and out of it, out of nowhere doesn't have something to do with the fact that this is actually a really difficult subject for me and I don't know what I'm doing. Long story short, I wanted to just voice for any of us who have ever felt the same way that sometimes it feels like the most difficult battle is just living normal life. It's easy to always be on edge waiting for the next theoretical bomb to go off. It's a weird kind of discomfort to realize that you are very deeply uncomfortable with things just being perhaps a little peaceful and quiet and normal. And I'm not sure how to live in this. I'm not sure how to find myself in this. Long story short, I wanna let you know where I was because I feel like I'm probably not the only person here and I just realized how to put words to it yesterday when I was talking to Brian. I was like, this is why I've been so uncomfortable lately. You know that feeling when like your clothes just don't fit right and nothing in your closet fits right and you just can't tell what it is, but something's off. I felt that way about like life for months now. Let me know if you've ever felt this way in the comment section down below. Let me know if you've never felt this way and you have no idea what I'm talking about which is completely understandable. And frankly, I hope that might be the case because maybe that means you haven't had to face really awful things. And I definitely hope that is the case for you. If you are new to my channel and you haven't yet joined our Footless Family by hitting that subscribe button, I would love if you did so. However, this is a bit of a weird video to come in on but this is where we're at, so I'd love to have you here. Also, while you're at it, you wanna hit that like button and helps this video get out to more people and I would truly appreciate it. To my patrons over on Patreon, you have my eternal gratitude. Thank you for being a part of my Patreon community. I truly appreciate each and every one of you. If you are interested in what Patreon is or what it does or what you might get from it, check out the link on screen or down below. It is a platform to support and connect with your favorite creators and I would love to see you over there. If you feel like it and to you watching this video right now, thank you so much for spending a few minutes out of your day here with me today. You could be anywhere in the world doing anything. You chose to hang out with me for a little bit and I truly appreciate that. I love you guys, I'm thinking about you and I'll see you in the next video. Bye guys.