Second Chances

Now being my second time around here, I feel that I have grown accustomed to many things:

• exact timings don't occur exactly as planned
• all children don't necessarily want to play
• yes, no, and maybe all are recognized visually as the same bobbing head
• pain means that it's working
• eating curried goodies with dirtied hands simply makes you stronger (except maybe for Graham)
• a smile is truly recognized as warmth, nothing more and absolutely nothing less
• traffic jams at 2 a.m.
• the smell incense and the songs of Ganesha in the morning
• elephants on the highway
• rainbow colors in the most unlikely of places
• welcomed pokes of little stem cells twice a day, like clockwork

And now for the things that I probably should be accustomed to by now, but, shamefully, aren't:

• rickshaw drivers with lead feet
• babies that don't know how to cry
• feeling like I could have tried harder than I did
• the weather
• the anticipation of things to come (this should be encouraging, and mostly is, yet it is still not something that I can get used to)
• literal understanding of bad cliches and poorly sarcastic remarks
• knowing that I am successful, no matter what

When I was greeted today with a familiar face of a patient I met only a few 4 short months ago, he remarked, "Wow, I didn't expect to see YOU back here!" Although I am not quite sure what that comment was supposed to invoke in me, it left me with a definite linger of something. If it hadn't, I wouldn't be sitting here 8 hours later fitting it into a blog that had no prior purpose nor appointment.

I suppose that some might say that from my attitude of not necessarily wanting to put full faith into this project and questioning even the most apparent of signs when I started it, that maybe, ya, it is strange for me to dive back in... but what you may not know is that I am a fighter, a fighter that is true to her soul.

I may outwardly behave as the skeptic, or the stoic, who may not recognize a true miracle when it hits her smack dab in the spinal cord... or better yet, may be confused by one. I think that it comes down to the fear of potential disappointment, or even scarier, potential realization that sometimes it isn't totally up to me.

Yes, it was, in fact, my choice to venture out on this very wobbly and extended limb-- but hey, wouldn't you? There is a far reaching sense of opportunity and fear, and with it comes the equally penetrating sense that I can't control every outcome. And somehow, all of this unease makes a powerful sentiment into my life.

What I do know is that I have to take risks sometimes in attempt to find what I might not have known I had been seeking all along. Again, on the outside, I may not show that I am in search of anything, especially on my own accord... but yet my eyes remain open to the most tumultuous of advances.

So to answer his statement, although realizing that it was not so much a question to be answered: I may have known it all along or I may have feared its return, but either way, I am here (and here NOW) and that should say enough for eternity.