This here (points at self) is what 20 plus years of smoking cigarettes looks like. Anywhere between a few cigarettes a day to an entire pack drinking beers at some hole-in-the-wall bar. This here is what one can expect from a shattered family life in ones early years. This life is what happens when expectations exceed ability; a gaping disparity filled with nearly 25 years of pot smoke and fingernails chewed to the quick (and beyond). This is what self-doubt can do to a fertile mind, this graying, shriveled remnant of synaptic function that once, many long years ago, beamed with a light that could blind.

That light was extinguished - or nearly so - when I lost my legs in a car accident 6 months ago. You see, I was a dancer, a member of the Thurgood Dance Troupe based in Philadelphia. We'd traveled the world with our last show, a circus-inspired bawdy burlesque that featured some wire work and elastic trapeze.