Yesterday was an interesting day. I’m still coming to grips with understanding my body. Normally, with the Cerebral Palsy, there is a warning before my body goes haywire; spasms in the legs or body. Now there are no warning signs and Max does what he wants, acts up when he wants. I just have to deal with it.

Earlier in the day, I was walking down Elgin and my legs started acting up. It was as if I had stepped on a minefield. My legs didn’t want to cooperate. It was like they were on spring boards and I had no control over the direction they were going in. I knew I had to sit down, had to rest, and the coffee shop was only a few doors away. It might as well have been miles. I couldn’t walk very well so every step was a small torture. I kept having to right myself from falling over, from giving in.

I made it to the coffee shop. There were stares as I walked in, but I let them look. I was only concerned with having a seat, just sitting down for a moment or two until my legs righted themselves. Thankfully coffee helped.

Then, later that evening, I faced a different kind of nightmare.

It was dark out. I left class and went to the bus stop. After standing in the cold for fifteen minutes, I checked when the bus would be coming. The bus wouldn’t be arriving for another thirty-five minutes due to bad weather. I couldn’t stand for that long.

So despite the complications of walking home, and what had happened earlier that day,  I chose to. The wind was fiercely cold, as if it were knives in my skin. but it was rather pretty having been the first snowfall of the winter season.

It was a long walk but I just looked at the freshly fallen snow. I thought how different the land around me looked with a coating of fresh snow, how it cleaned away everything. I tried to picture the same thing happening to my body.

I turned on to Gladstone. I couldn’t walk in the road, I kept slipping on the ice and snow, so I moved to the sidewalks. I almost fell twice, trying to navigate the cement that was like a mountain.

Eventually I made it home. It happened when I was finally able to sit down, to stop for a moment. When I tried to get up again, my legs would not cooperate, would not listen to what I needed them to do. Even making a cup of tea was difficult. They were spasming and shaking so much, filled with needles and shards of glass.

It didn’t matter. I had made it home in one piece, I had conquered the flat mountain and my body, doing what I thought I wouldn’t be able to do. It was a small battle but I had won.

I just have to keep on winning.