Will a gal with PTSD in the brain and legs chopped up at the knee make it? Will she grab herself a shred of the American dream? Yeah, maybe. Yeah is for keeping a positive attitude, maybe for knowing in life nothing’s for certain.

Given my usual insistence on privacy, some may ask why I’ve gone and written my story. I reckon I wanted to beat the next clever son of a gun to the punch. People in high, low, and sideways places have already done enough to mold my life in their own image. Least I can do is yank back the bit that still belongs to me.

What bit? The one between my ears, the one in my heart, the one between me and my dogs, happening under the God that grants me breath every second and lets me dwell in pain almost as often. Yeah, I’ll hold on to that, thank you very much.

I’ll keep on walking on these fancy legs someone’s given me for purposes I do not yet understand nor want to probe further. I’ll keep dodging whatever tangled schemes they’d devised for me. Above all, I’ll push on with my dogs to re-stitch and re-weave my life strand by strand. I’ll crawl and claw for as long as I have to.

What an IED and the cruelty of man ripped from me, I’ll reclaim, mangled and deformed as it may come out in the end. I’ll hold on to it. I’ll pull it together when it strains to blow apart.

Will it all turn out alright in the end? Yeah, maybe. Yeah for the positive attitude I’ll fight to uphold, maybe for admitting in life nothing’s for sure.