Life Behind The Wheel's

Not yet, but soon

The future lives inside Jessica like a fire she refuses to let die. Even while stuck healing, even while confined to bed rest and routines and limitations, her mind constantly reaches toward the life waiting outside these walls. She imagines summer evenings with her family sitting around a crackling fire while smoke curls into the cold night air. Elijah laughing while throwing sticks into the flames. Her parents sitting nearby, relaxed for once instead of worried. She pictures herself outside long enough to feel the earth again instead of blankets and mattresses and pressure relief cushions. Those dreams sound simple to other people, but to Jessica they feel enormous. Freedom has changed meaning for her. Freedom is no longer partying, chaos, or running wild through life the way addiction once convinced her it was. Freedom now means presence. Breathing fresh air without pain dominating every thought. Feeling included in life instead of separated from it. Being able to sit outside with the people she loves and simply exist there peacefully. That future keeps her going because she knows healing is not just physical — it is the bridge between surviving and truly living again.

She dreams constantly about taking Elijah outside more. Not through windows. Not through stories. Really outside. She wants beach days where she can hear waves crashing while Elijah runs through the sand collecting rocks and driftwood. She wants to watch him grow under sunlight instead of hospital lights and bedroom ceilings. She imagines him catching tiny fish at the shoreline while proudly showing her every single one like it is the greatest achievement in the world. She wants campfires, muddy shoes, fishing rods, sunsets, laughter, road trips, and memories that do not smell like antiseptic or sound like medical equipment. As a mother, one of the hardest parts of disability is not just losing physical freedom for herself — it is feeling temporarily unable to give her child the life she wants to share with him. That anticipation burns inside her daily. She knows those moments are waiting for them eventually. That knowledge hurts and motivates her at the same time. Every day of healing feels painfully slow because mentally she is already out there living those future memories in her head.

One of the deepest dreams she carries is hunting with her father. That dream means more than simply getting a hunting license. It represents reclaiming pieces of herself she thought she lost forever. It represents family traditions, connection, strength, and normalcy. Jessica imagines cold early mornings layered in heavy clothes, the quiet of the woods before sunrise, hearing branches c***k beneath boots and tires, sitting beside her father sharing silence that says more than words ever could. She wants to feel capable again. She wants to prove to herself that life did not end with paralysis, it only changed direction. Hunting with her dad would mean she is still part of life, still part of the outdoors, still somebody capable of adventure despite everything her body has endured. There is something deeply emotional about wanting to return to nature after surviving years of addiction and trauma. Nature does not judge. Forests do not care about wheelchairs or scars or past mistakes. The woods simply exist. And Jessica aches to exist freely inside them again.

But the hardest part of her future right now is the waiting. The unbearable waiting. She carries an enormous urge to go live — truly live — but her body keeps telling her “not yet.” Healing requires patience, and patience feels cruel when your spirit is desperate for movement. There are days she likely feels trapped between two versions of herself: the woman hungry to experience life again, and the woman forced to stay still long enough to recover properly. That tension creates frustration, sadness, restlessness, even anger sometimes. She wants to go now. She wants fires now. Fishing now. Beaches now. Freedom now. But deep down she understands something important: if she rushes healing, she risks delaying the very future she is fighting so hard to reach. So instead, she waits with determination instead of surrender. She heals because she has plans. She rests because she refuses to lose the future she sees so clearly in her mind. And one day, when she finally sits beside a fire under an open sky with Elijah laughing nearby and her father beside her, all this waiting will transform into proof that she made it through.