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Thank God for the Dads of Children With Disabilities

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My biggest dream has always been to be an interior designer. Why you ask? Because I love, love, love to organize! Like seriously, when I was younger at least two times a week I would organize, tidy and clean my room.

Naturally, as my pain got worse I had to do less and less and less. I could just see how I wanted to have it organized in my mind, and it would haunt me until I would throw it all to the wind and organize with a week and a half long recuperation. But to my wannabe interior designer soul, it was so worth it!

This past year has sucked (and I never use that word), so many bad things including almost losing my little brother in a car crash. In the mix of all that rubbish of feeling, I also had to turn down my scholarship to my dream college of interior design. I can barely make it out of my bed for more than three hours and barely out of the house once a week. My soul has been so very crushed by this loss — the loss of a cherished dream I have had since the age of 13.

But life goes on.

Today I woke up knowing I had to put my dream of reorganizing my room into action. One minute in and I was worried…even more pain, limbs not working…two minutes…I was trying to think of how to ask my family for help, but hating myself and the whole wide world for how pathetic my body has become. Needing help even eating and here I was, unable to do the thing I loved most. My most pure therapy and cure for any negative mood, and I couldn’t do it. Three minutes in and I slowly, painfully (emotionally and physically) made my way out of my room, down the hall and stood before my parents who were watching a movie together. Stilted and brokenhearted I asked for help.

There was my dad. He hopped up to help me without hesitation. He made a joke about my plan to rearrange and I turned to him with anger in my eyes…until I saw the look in his. It told me he knew how hard it was. Those light blue eyes told me he knew I was in so much pain and even more, he knew how much it meant to me to rearrange. He knew. And so he made a joke to help me laugh because he also knew how much I love to laugh.

Cheered up down to my very soul, I laughed out that awful feeling of helplessness and hatred at losing my body even more than the past 12 years have brought. And we got to work!

Hours later of crazy rearranging and a bit of trial and error, a few more unseen problems and humorous findings and my room is done! Exactly as I imagined it, without a word or negativity from my dad while I “supervised” and he moved, pulled, shoved and struggled to move everything just as I wanted. Happily a lot of things were made easier by my previous knowledge of how to move things best in my room. Twenty-one years of living in one room can make a girl seem wiser beyond her years!

Breathing a deep breath of clean sheets of my comfy, fluffy bed, my pup at my side and everything just so, and I can’t help but send a great big strong prayer up to the heavens: “Thank you God for my dad!”

Photo credit: nicoletaionescu/Getty Images

Originally published: December 4, 2019
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