She hated the wheelchair. Wouldn’t look at it for weeks. When the physical therapist first brought it, Mia turned her whole body toward the wall and wouldn’t turn back until it was gone.
“I don’t want it,” she said. “I’m not sitting in that thing.”
“Baby, it’s going to help you get around. It’s going to give you your freedom back.”
“It’s not freedom. It’s a sign that says I’m broken.”
Eight years old. Where does a child even get a sentence like that.
And then one day, she said the thing that split my heart clean down the middle. We were getting ready to go to a doctor’s appointment, and I was trying to get her into the chair, and she was fighting me, and finally she just went limp and started to cry and said:
“I’m the broken girl now, Mom. That’s all I am. I’m the broken girl and everyone’s going to look at me and that’s all they’ll ever see.”
