OK, I have had 2 strokes in past 10 months. I can't ride a bike or drive a motercycle anymore. I can't read or focus on fine details any more. I can't dance ballet or ballroom anymore.

But I CAN sew, embroider and crochet by feel, still paint and still create stained glass. I CAN train my own service dog. I CAN remember the words for most things, in one language or the other, and describe what I can't remember. I CAN still walk. I CAN still talk. I CAN still manage my life day to day.

Does that make me amazing? I thought it just made me, well, me. But friends, family, people at church, people who ask me about Monster, they all seem to think that makes me "amazing" and want to know what I "will do next." That is a lot of pressure to live up to, let me tell you. What will I do next? I think I will just continue to live, thank you very much. Why do I have to "do" anything more?

I feel like a trained monkey and the whole world is the audience waiting to see what new trick I pull out of my bag. "Dance, monkey, dance!!" Well, I won 't dance. Can't make me.

I wish people would stop and think before they say things. In the beginning, i tihnk we all need to hear "you're doing great!" After a while, I tihnk we get to the point, at least I have, where we just wnat to be seen like anyone else. We can do what we can do, and we can't do what we can't do. It isn't so different and it isn't any more "amazing" than those of us who are double jointed or can roll their tongues.

It is what it is and we are what we are, just like everyone else. Why do I have to spend the rest of my life chasing what I "used to be able to do," just to make others happy? Why can't they be happy that I am discovering what I can still do and enjoying my life? Isn't that what we are all trying to do?