Leaving Treadmarkz Across the Universe

by Treadmarkz

Yep, it’s official, Treadmarkz will be in hard copy for the first time ever when one of my stories appears in New Mobility magazine’s June issue. Reserve your copy now! I will be published under the name Forrest Dailey. It is a story which demonstrates that we are all much more alike in our experiences than we think we are.

by Treadmarkz

Musicgoat.com is my brother-in-law’s music blog. I recently came up with the idea to write a piece in which I attempt to explain the break-up of the Beatles using the law of Karma as a guide. Give it a look, and if you are a fan of music – any music! -  take a look around while you are there. He covers pretty much everything. And if you are interested in the piece, stop over at RockOm.net where you will find a variety of pieces to ponder regarding that place where rock music and spirituality collide. Remember that is Rock OM.

by Treadmarkz

One night, a man who uses a wheelchair dreamed that he was watching himself push through the wilderness. As he rolled through the wilderness, many scenes from his life flashed in the sky. As each scene flashed, he noted that beside the wheel tracks in the mud, there was a  set of footprints. Further, he noticed that whenever scenes flashed showing the most troublesome, burdened times of his life – trying to fit in, trying to be independent, therapies and surgery -the footprints seemed to come in line with the wheel tracks.

“Thank you, Lord, for knowing when I could not do it myself, and for carrying me through my times of trouble!” he cried out.”Thank you for giving me the push I needed!”

But the Lord said: “My son, during the times when you see my footprints in line with your path, I was not pushing you. It was then that I went before you to clear your path, as I know your heart and I heard your voice crying out in the wilderness telling me there were some obstacles you needed removed. For instance, I removed a tree trunk from the path but you still went over the hill yourself.”

by Footprintz,

Those of you who have followed this blog throughout the last year or so may have noticed a marked drop in output over the last few months.

You may also have noticed that I changed the name of this website from “Leaving Treadmarkz Across the Universe” to “Leaving Footprintz Across the Universe.” There is a reason for both changes and they are connected. The reason is I have been busy. A lot of bloggers say that when they cut production, but I have been busy doing things that I have never, ever done before! Let me start at the beginning.

I started this blog as a man with spina bifida and I wanted to tell the world a little about my life and what it is like with a disability. Well, back on December 15 I recieved a call from a doctor who was present at the hospital on the day I was born. And he told me something that made me hysterically angry and hysterically blissful at the same time. He is no longer affiliated with the hospital where I was born, so he was able to tell me this:

He told me that I was in fact born a healthy baby, but for reasons he could not explain my parents were told by the doctor that delivered me that I had spina bifida. My parents took me home with the news that I had special needs and would never walk. The power of those spoken words apparently held so much sway that from the very beginning, that even though I was perfectly healthy, I never did use my legs, and I never did learn to walk. Crap, I was even allergic to things that people with spina bifida are supposed to be allergic to. Talc in Latex, chocolate, and bananas.

As time went on, and as doctor after doctor looked at my incorrect charts, I had a lot of unnecessary surgeries. This added new and just-as-erroneous diagnoses and prognoses into the mix, and the untruth became stronger and stronger until there came a time in my adulthood that I thought that I was even more disabled than that. I began thinking that I was “slow” and the very thought, and the act of saying it out loud gave me reason to expect less of myself.

I gave that part of it up a long time ago, but on December 15 of last year, when that doctor told me that I was not in fact born with spina bifida, that I was not in fact paralyzed from the waist down, that I was not physically paralyzed at all, things began to change. I began to feel things in my lower extremeties, to a point where I began to get out of my wheelchair. I recently got a new wheelchair, but I have been using it less and less. I still use it at work, and I use it to go out and get the mail, but because I have used it less I am not very good at it. In fact one day I rolled it over off a step and crashed my chair scratching the wheel badly.

I use it while living my civic life because I haven’t wanted anyone knowing that anything had changed. But I have been getting out a lot, anonymously, out of town, just doing things I have never gotten to do before. It’s okay. But the only person I have told is my wife. Not even my parents, brother or sister know yet. For that I am sorry. But I worried about how I’d be treated having been “healed”. So I just went on living and observing life as a disabled man, but as a non-disabled man. But I think I am ready to move on and let the world know the power of thought and how it has affected my life.

That’s why it’s now “Footprintz” instead of “Treadmarkz” and Happy April Fools Day, by the way. 

But seriously. Just think about what I said. Think about all the things we tell ourselves and believe. Just imagine.