My neighbor was in an accident when she was 19. She loves talking to me because I'm 19. She says she feels like she's stuck at 19 years old but her body has aged without her; she likes to tell me stories about her life before her accident. She could talk forever about the way she used to dance with her friends, sneak out and go to parties and drink herself sick, about the first time she smoked weed, about the night of her accident, and about how if she would have been raised right maybe she would still be able to dance and move her body the way she used to.
I sit and listen because at the end of the day her story haunts me, and the lady deserves respect enough for me to listen. I can't imagine being in a car accident so awful that it changes me completely and leaves me alone and paralyzed. It makes me realize that I have hope for the future like I didn't before. if I went back a year ago and went over my expectations for the future they would be a complete 180 from what they are now. I would have been okay with a pet and a lonely apartment, I would have been content with throwing myself into my career- now I want more. I expect more from this life, I want to roll over and see the love of my life laying next to me like I did a week ago. I want to look up from my bed and see him working away on his computer, I want to decorate our home with little pieces of us and I want to keep finding out new things to love about him.
I want to work until I drop to spoil the personnel I love, and buy cute new things for our home, go out on dates and be disgustingly in love. I find myself daydreaming and finding a million different ways of making our lives work. I love him, and he makes me hopeful, it's like I told him the other night- he's the thing with feathers.