11.07.04
My friend Haris,
When the moment that I will expect absolutely nothing from people comes, it will certainly be a big moment for me, since I will have thus accomplished something really great. For now, I can just say that I took the right direction. Anyway, when I am looking for something, I don’t take it for granted that I will get it anyway. What we give and what we get is a big issue and it can concern us on many levels.
Previously, I used to ask constantly for the appreciation of those around me. I suppose that my mom had just spoiled me rotten to the degree of expecting from the others everything that she offered me; on a practical level but not only that.
I’ve got something very recent in my mind, probably related directly to what we are talking about. When I park the car at work every morning, I need someone’s help to unload my wheelchair from the car and then help me reach the entrance and take the lift. This was done by my colleagues until a few days ago, when they put Evangelia (the girl who helped me more than anyone) in charge of announcing me something very bad (despite the meaning of her name ) Evangelia means someone who spreads good news). So she had to find a way to let me know that she would not be able to help me in the future any longer; neither she nor anybody else. She wasn’t that blatantly clear of course; instead of that, she said: ‘Tomorrow tell your mom to come take you out because I won’t be here – I don’t think that she’ll be in serious trouble if she wakes up early for once’. All this seemed to be said from the lips of all my colleagues, since nobody offered to replace Evangelia that day.
I’ve never asked them for even the slightest help ever since and I decided to use my wheelchair more often, even in my office, since I used to ‘borrow’ their arms even to go to the loo. My mother used to forbid me to use the wheelchair in the house, because she thought that I would stick to it and thus avoid walking with or my walking sticks. I couldn’t use the device at work, since the office is really narrow. On the other hand, I thought it would be really bad to use the wheelchair when I could do a few steps and thus stretch out a bit with a little help from my colleagues. So I was always in need of them, and they even forgot about me once or twice until I exploded.
This is why I decided to become autonomous. I am proud. I don’t expect almost anything from anybody at work. This independence is great and I feel that everything happened for a good reason in the end. At first, I was angry at the reluctance of those people to help me in something as important. Later, I remembered something that I forget from time to time: Nobody is obliged to offer me anything. This might sound harsh but it can console at the same time, when you know that you don’t owe anything to anybody other than the people who are truly close to you and yourself.
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