We all have our ups and downs. We all have good days or bad, and we don’t get to decide when they happen. A good day typically happens easily, most commonly, and we tend to let our days fall onto the good side. When we have a bad day it tends to happen slowly and then get worse. We might decide that we just “woke up on the wrong side of the bed” or we might have just had a bad nights’ sleep. Sometimes we just get lucky on a good day (or get lucky for a quick time during a bad day). Well yesterday I had a good day (just out of luck), and it made today a bad one. To make the long story short I’ll put it for you in three short words: I can’t run. And the reason behind that is an even longer story, but it was hard to admit it to myself finally yesterday.

It started a few years ago after I had a brain injury come from a mosquito bite that gave me a virus. It went to my brain and attached itself to the part of our brain that help control our balance, our cerebellum. I ended up coming back from the injury with strength being given to me, to heal in a way that even the doctors weren’t sure of. No longer having the ability to control my body’s balance brought me very quickly to a therapist who helped me with my physical abilities. During those few weeks that I worked to gain back my bodies’ abilities, I got help to walk/run again, but also other things that I was unable to do because of my brain’s injuries. I continued to try and walk, and even run.

Sometimes I went with my boyfriend to the gym, since he was enrolled with me in a health class. We had to run at the gym as well at lifting weights sometimes and I also had some problems doing that. However after I finished that class I didn’t continue to run, so I slowly lost that ability and never gained it back, and never realized it either until I tried to run along side of an equine that was running at a much faster pace than I was ready for.

When I needed to do it yesterday I was able to support myself and I got lucky with the help of the support, but today it wasn’t there. I was supposed to be running, but I fell and luckily didn’t hurt anything except a small scrape on my arm. I didn’t immediately cry, but I did eventually when I was with my dad, but it was just out of anger and having to finally admit it to myself that I can’t run. Since I ran yesterday (but with the support of all my weight being held up by a horse!) I decided to try and walk/run with my mom and I admitted it to her yesterday that I couldn’t run. While out on our walk/run I tried to just run a short distance and even that was hard. I am not able to feel my feet on the ground. The balance of my body is not felt on my feet, and while running (moving at a faster pace) it makes it even harder for me to try and “see” my balance. My legs flail and drag and I don’t have the ability to change that when trying to run next to a horse at their speed.

So today I unfortunately hit a fence. I tried to support my body by holding onto the horse that I was trying to run next to, but I couldn’t support myself totally. I ended up tripping and falling onto the fence, but luckily the fence caught my body so I didn’t fall onto the ground or get stepped on by the horse! In the end I do feel that I was lucky enough to be able to walk (considering I had lost that ability a while ago), and the hardest part of it was, again, admitting it to myself.