Plot Twist

After much thought and consideration, I've decided to refer to the loss of my leg and the cancer that lead to it, as a plot twist in an otherwise predictable story. Girl leaves home, goes to college, and parties a little too hard. Girl meets boy, settles down, and BOOM, plot twist. Cancer, surgery, more cancer, amputation, more surgery, then girl has a different but happy life.

We live for the plot twists, the part of the movie where the unexpected happens, and we jump to the edge of our seats. All of a sudden, the screen has our attention, and we need to know how it's going to play out. It's a bit different, though, when it's not a movie or a book but your actual life that has taken an unimaginable turn no one could have seen coming.

Since my fateful plot twist, every day has been full of surprises and lessons. I've faced challenges and labels that still feel so foreign to me. I am disabled, I had cancer twice, and I only have five toes. When my right knee itches, I can't scratch it because it's just a phantom feeling.

But like any good plot twist, there is always the chance for a comeback, a happy ending, if you will—the opportunity to let your most challenging moment become the one that shows you all you can be. I prefer to be remembered not as who I was with two legs or who I was when a tumor invaded the right one and shook me to my core. Instead, I'd like to be remembered for the way I still found reasons to laugh hard, travel often, live, and love even after all of the bad. The friends I made, the friends I kept, and the ways I grew to know and value myself without losing any of my sass. I still enjoy a good plot twist, even after mine left me with missing body parts. As long as we don't sit with it so long that we can't get back up. It's what we make of the messy twist that matters. Do we dance in it, clean it up, rebuild it all? Do you want to be the survivor in the story? Don't focus on the reader's perspective. Focus on writing an ending that makes you proud of how far you've come. The rest will wrap itself up like the last chapter of a New York Times bestseller.