What It's Like To Be Me

Imagine waking up in a muffled silence; light filtering through the window nearby seems smokey and dull grey; the bed is softer than cotton with scratchy strands that alternately tickle and scratch your skin. A pillow is obscuring your view and you can’t seem to shake your head free of the cotton roll. When you try to raise your head, it feels thick and unwieldy. Your neck doesn’t respond to asking it to move up or lift off the bedding.

Something is odd about the way you can think about sitting up, but you can’t get up. You can imagine moving your arms about to leverage your torso up and forward. When you try to activate your shoulders and turn your head aside, your arms flail out and you become like the dung beetles curled up along the hot sidewalks. Your mind does not steer your extremities no matter how hard you think yourself into a position, the message is not getting to your muscles...you have cerebral palsy, a disconnect between the mind and the extremity.