This poem was written many years ago, when I was in a very different place emotionally than I am now. Looking back, I felt so low, surrounded by challenges that couldn’t go away. Today, I feel empowered – even though I can’t change my circumstances, I am not bound by them, and I can choose to live a happy, fulfilling life.
“You can move on you can get past this,” they say.
“You’re amazing, always smiling, such Simcha you display.”
“You do so much although we don’t know how.”
For me to have emotions and feelings, the world doesn’t allow.
“So many obstacles and challenges you overcame-
We wonder how you’re still sane.”
If only they would know what is in my heart.
If only they would know, inside I am falling apart.
But they don’t know, because they can’t know.
So I’m stuck in a rut, putting on a show.
Stuck in a rut that nobody could see.
Can’t they see I’m in misery?
My life is full of challenge and disability.
I hate to kvetch and complain, yet it’s hard to feel acceptability.
So differently abled I am,
I shouldn’t complain, this is all Hashem’s plan.
My life is in His hands,
All that I am living is after all His commands.
It’s hard to go with the flow,
When my life seems to be at a standstill, with no place to go.
I am a prisoner looking out of her cell.
Or perhaps a crippled butterfly in a shell.
Wherever I turn, there is a roadblock.
I’m swimming in deep water; will I ever reach the dock?
Yet they say, so confidently with no doubt.
You can move on, so don’t just stand there and pout.
You can move on and overcome.
There is so much that you can become.
Yet they don’t know that I am stuck, stuck in a rut.
The suffering feels so thick, with a knife it can be cut.
No, I can’t move on, my life is at a standstill.
Not going upwards, only going downhill.
When I think there is a promising light,
I think, “Don’t fool yourself, go fly a kite.”
The future looks black-
I feel like glass, ready to crack.
If anybody would have read this they would have an attack.
“You can do it,” they would say.
I hope they are right, I hope and I pray
I hope that one day moving on will be in the plan.
One day I will say,
“Yes, I can!”
And now looking back after all these years,
I can see Hashem carried me through the fears.
The challenges are still there, that much is true.
But today I focus on the blessings, and all I can do.
The rut that once seemed endless, did not last forever.
Hashem was guiding me through every endeavor.
The future I feared eventually came,
And through it all, I was never quite the same.
Today when challenges come my way,
I try to find the positive in each day.
And the words, “Yes, I can,”
I once hoped would come true,
Now here I am today,
They’ve carried me through.