 Hello my beautiful internet friends, welcome back to my channel and to a mood lit video where I'm sitting on the floor and talking to you about semi-emotional things. It seems like a youtuber apology video, but it's not. I wanted to talk a little bit today about my relationship with my leg. Now that sounds weird, doesn't it? Please allow me to explain. I've been thinking about this a lot over the last couple weeks. I now have a pretty working prosthetic leg. This has been a long time in coming, a very long time in coming. I've thought hard for it, I've worked hard for it, I'll continue to work hard for it, but I don't know how I feel about her. You guys have seen me make some incredible steps forward. Like being able to do things I haven't been able to do in a long time and hit these really cool milestones. Like I've been wearing my leg all day for three days now. That's incredible. And it's been tolerable, it's been okay. It's hurt sometimes, but I'm able to work around it and get it to feel okay and all of that. And that's great. But on the flip side, I feel like I have this weird uncomfortable relationship. It's almost like being forced to a group project with someone who you don't really love but you know you have to work together. So you're like, okay, let's put our differences and find a way to make this work. Because yeah, I never wanted this to be the case in the first place and I feel like now that I'm actually taking very positive steps forward, I'm really realizing that. I'm not saying at all that I regret this decision. I don't like the fact that I ever had to make a decision. This is never something I would have chosen for my life as we've talked about before. And for the record, I hope someday I get to the place where I can say, you know, I wouldn't have it any other way, but I'm just not there yet. And it's funny. It's weird celebrating victories about something that you never wanted to be. Like being able to go hiking for the first time on my prosthetic leg is uncomfortable for me to talk about. It's really exciting, you know, people cheer me on and that's so amazing, like so meaningful and just touches my heart. But like on a personal level, I'm like, I don't want to be typing out into this video title, going hiking for the first time on my prosthetic leg. I just want to go hiking. I don't want to have to worry about any of this, but that will never be the case again. And I really do feel like it's like a relationship with this new part of my body, with this new inanimate object that I need to make friends with and make peace with and figure out a way to love. Like I look down at my foot right now and it's a different skin color than my skin color. It's chewed on by a dog, which is hilarious. It's dirty because rubber is harder to clean. You know, it's got these like grooves in the top, which I don't know why those exist. That just looks weird. It's like cut off at the top. So my foot doesn't really look like a foot. It looks like a very plastic foot and that's okay, because that's how prosthetic legs work. But this is all so weird. It's all so uncomfortable and weird to be celebrating victories about something that I never wanted to have a part of. Like this is never a position I wanted to be in, right? Like I did get to make a decision about the timing of it. This is never something that I actually wanted. I just wanted to live in less pain. I just wanted to be able to do more and I might be getting to that place pretty soon, but it comes with so many hurdles and so many headaches and so many little things and a lot of gifts too. But I feel the weight of all of the extra things right now. I don't really feel like it's a part of me. It physically feels weird, it physically feels uncomfortable, not bad, not super painful, just uncomfortable. And sometimes I want to show it. Sometimes I really don't. That's confusing. That changes day by day and I don't know. I just wanted to talk about the fact that it's really weird to try to make peace with a brand new part of my body that I have to make peace with, but that I never really wanted and it's weird to be celebrating cool things happening with this process, but not being as excited as I really, really, really want to be. I really want to just like be all in thrilled, crying with happiness, but I'm not. I'm still pretty emotionally numb, probably from how exhausting this last year has been. Yeah, it's really cool that I'm starting to do stuff, but I wish that I could just do that stuff anyways. Part of me resents the fact that I'm an amputee. Part of me resents the fact that I have a prosthetic leg. It still doesn't feel like me. I still won't really identify with those words. Not that I have to. It's just weird to me that I don't. I don't know where this fits in my life. I don't know where this fits in me and yet it has to, at least like the prosthetic leg portion of things. It's really funny trying to build a relationship with a thing that you never wanted that you now need. I think that there are positive, healthy, fun ways to do that, which I will experiment with. And I don't love saying that because I feel like it makes, I feel like it sounds ungrateful, but it is honestly where I am. I'm having a hard time accepting this, even though it is obviously reality. I'm having a hard time accepting this is going to sound dumb, that my leg is actually gone. I'm having a hard time accepting that it's not coming back and that this is my life and it's okay. And I'll find a way through it. And I honestly don't have any other way to summarize it other than this is weird. This is a weird process. Yeah, I just wanted to own up about that. Thanks for listening as always. This is a weird and short video and I have no idea if I'm actually going to post this. So if I did decide to post it and you're watching it, I have a lot of gratitude for you choosing to spend a few minutes out of your day listening to me. Thank you sincerely from the bottom of my heart. You rock and I appreciate that. And you know what? I think I'm going to go take a nap right here, right now because I'm emotionally and physically exhausted. Thank you for choosing to spend a few minutes out of your day here with me listening to me talk in an only semi coherent fashion about my weird relationship with my new prosthetic leg. It's odd. I'm not sure what to do about it or what to do with it. I'm going to keep moving forward, but this is bizarre. It's just weird and uncomfortable and weird and I don't know. I love you guys. Thank you for listening. I'm thinking of you and I will see you in this next video. Bye guys.