I have no legs (1/?)

It's been that way as long as I can remember. Oh wait, yeah, that's because I was born with this shit. It's a genetic disease, my doctor has always said. The disease is called Phocomelia. I was born without legs. In most cases this disease is hereditary, meaning someone in my family has had it. This was the case with me. My grandmother on my mother's side was born without a left leg. Unfortunately, be it by genetics or by God's decision to physically smite me, I was born without both.

You should see my arms.. I've got the strongest arms ever. Want to arm wrestle me? Forget it. It's over, I'd win. I just turned 19 and I don't have prosthetic limbs and I don't plan on getting any. Depending on what kind of medical coverage you have, you may or may not be covered to get prosthetic limbs. I've seen amputees and have talked to a few of them that talk very highly of their prosthetic limbs. Some of them are very pushy about it. They tell me about how much their worth getting and all that. About how much more normal they feel now. I hate their way of thinking and talking. To me, they now talk to me just like the people who have had legs their whole lives and consider me worthy of their misplaced sympathy.

Fuck that shit. The people that come and greet me that have, and have always had, both arms and legs I have gotten accustomed to giving a pass to. When I say I give them a pass, I mean I pretend to get the same experience out of seeing them  I feel the opposite of what most people would think. I feel sorry for them. I feel sorry for the fact that they are so low of human being that they look and talk to me as though I have a disease. Not every person is like this, but the vast majority of people are. They want to be good people, in their own weird sense, but to me they are bad company and are fucked up. These people are so quick to offer their condolences and tears. Man! I envy them! I want to feel that way. I can notice within about the first 30 seconds of seeing you if you are going to talk to or look at me as someone that has no legs. I'm 19, but when it comes to people, I swear I've seen it all. 

Anyway, I got off track. "Normal people" or the ones I grant my sympathy to, I can handle. I've seen plenty of them and I know how to act. It's these guys with their new prosthetics man. These guys that come in and talk to me about how great their new prosthetic legs are. About how it has really changed their entire outlook on life. I really get upset at hearing shit like that from these people. One guy who I talked the most with went through rehab with me. I considered him a very good friend. We motivated each other to get stronger.

We did too. We both excelled in rehab and became strong. Both mentally and physically. We built each other up when we were feeling low about our situation. We fed off of each other's energy, I think. Looking back, this is because of the attitude we had towards each other. We both were born with Phocomelia and without both legs, and when younger, neither of us had any tolerance towards someone else feeling bad about themselves. After completing our teenage rehabilitation, I thought he was just like me.

Despite the show that he put on to me about his prosthetics last week, I know what he went through. I know how hard we worked out together. I saw him struggle and he saw me struggle. We stayed at the same hospital for nearly 2 years and saw each other just about every day. 

He walked into my room last week and it was as if he was a completely different person. I swear he wasn't the same guy. To tell you the truth, I'm most scared of getting prosthetic limbs because of him, not the Iraq war vets that I'll sometimes visit with. 

I know this guy and his name is Sam. Everything about him changed when he got his prosthetic limbs. It was as if his life had been reborn. That's how he was seemingly describing it. It was a new life that I wasn't privileged to be a part of, or that I had to change to be. Such a fucking hypocrite. When we were younger we both talked, and eventually joked, about how we hated having people come and talk down to us. He was doing this now and it made me sick to my stomach to see from him.

Sam agreed to some hotshot filmmakers to do a documentary about his life before and after his prosthetic limbs for money. Now he's got some sponsorships and shit like that going for him so he can make money from his situation. Bunch of bullshit if you ask me. He wears clothes other people tell him to wear and shit like that, you know. 

I didn't have the tolerance for Sam when he came into to my room pitching me about how seemingly great it now is to be him. He used to be someone who didn't like the attention, who would embrace and challenge himself just because of how it made him feel. Maybe I'm wrong about Sam though. I mean obviously he didn't feel the same about our rehabilitation as I did. I felt good. Committing to rehabilitation had nothing to do with whatever benefits I received from it. We, or at least I, didn't commit to finishing rehabilitation 3 months before expected because we wanted to impress anyone or to get physically stronger. Sam and I committed and worked hard throughout our rehab because fuck it, that was a challenge we, as humans, decided to embrace together. And we fucking did it. When you turn 15 and have Phocomelia, you're supposed to go through teenage rehabilitation in 16 months. Sam and I did it in 13 months just for the fuck of it.