I am not who I once was. There are snippets of her left, lying around and slowly dying out, like victims of radiation poisoning. Some days I feel proud of myself for everything I’ve overcome and on others I am exhausted for what I have gone through. The simple victory of being alive is simply not enough to be grateful for on those days. I have had dreams nearly every night that I’m crawling through endless tunnels, being chased by terrifying people who want to hurt me. So much of my lifetime has been plagued by nightmares, that I can recall vividly any good dream I have ever had. My biggest fear now is that it’s all for nothing, this useless transformation. The one that broke my back in multiple places, contorting my spine into something unrecognizable, and then replacing it entirely. I want my perseverance to mean something, for it not to become useless and forgotten. I want every person who stood watching, while God beat me to death, to feel sorry for standing on the sidelines.