In this blog, I have talked mostly about my experiences and the things I have learned from them. I do this not to just talk about myself, but to help others gain some insight into the disabled experience and to help others relate to some of the very real things I deal with, which they may also face in their own lives.
But today’s prompt is about another person – specifically, one of the most important people in my life, the girl who has my heart and who I am so proud to call my girlfriend. She is a pretty fantastic writer and hosts a blog of her own here. Additionally, she has participated in many adaptive sports, including sled hockey where we met when we played on opposing teams and eventually played together. Now our hockey days are over, and she has participated in CrossFit for a couple of years now. Last year at the 2022 CrossFit Games, she ranked first in the United States, and fourth in the world in the women’s seated with hip function division.
For the past week, she has been visiting me in Florida from her home state of Pennsylvania, getting a much needed break from the winter temperatures that have set in for much of the north. I have gotten to show her my childhood home, my former high school, and we got to participate in the Brooksville Christmas Parade, which was a tradition for me as a child when I rode on the float for the Egypt Shrine Club as a Shriners kid.
Every day, she inspires me to be a better version of myself in everything that I do. Even since she has been here, I have done more for myself where I previously would have asked for somebody to help me. All it took was a little adaptation and some determination, a similarity she and I share as we are both disabled with physical and mental health challenges.
We had been friends for about six years when, last year, we tried to take our relationship to the next level. We found out after a few months together that our personal struggles were too much to overcome in trying to maintain a healthy relationship and we both had a lot of personal growth to achieve before things would work like we wanted them to.
We took about a year and a half apart without contact until one night, one of her TikTok videos came scrolling across my phone. As the adventurous Sagittarius that I am, I decided to go for it and post a comment so she knew I saw her. Then, encouraged by her response to it, I decided to send her a private Facebook message, where I explained my reflection of the events of our past and apologized for the way I handled our breakup. As I said, we were both struggling mightily at the time in our personal lives, and I hadn’t yet overcome my struggles with developing anxious attachments.
We have been talking again since late summer of this year and we both decided that our first trial of love was a case of “right person, wrong time.” We are now together again and, as I said, she inspires me now more than she ever has before. She encourages me to believe in myself, and she is even a big reason why I started this blog. I have always loved to share other people’s stories, and she made me believe that my own story was one that deserved to be shared.
Who knows what the future holds? I choose to believe that we will have a life together that we can both be proud of, no matter what happens. I admire absolutely everything about her, and every single day, I consider myself the luckiest guy ever.
Down by the Cypress Trees 
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