"Living in my own skin"

I often dream about that day when I realized my life was forever changed.  I was a college volleyball player and having the time of my life living the college life.  Untouchable, or so I thought I was, and that was how I lived.  Little did I know, months shy of my 21st birthday, I would be lying in a hospital bed questioning what I had done wrong in my life to deserve something as terrible as this. It was March 3rd, 2000.

The sirens blared as they moved me out of the first ambulance and into another that later my mother would tell me was a LifeLine ambulance.  One that transports critical patients.  In a brief ride to St. Joe's Hospital in Bloomington, Illinois I was cared for by former high school classmates and parents of my childhood friends.  It was surreal.  Having been examined at a hospital with no burn unit, another ambulance ride would take me on what I thought was the longest journey of my life.

 "3rd degree burns from a grease fire" I kept hearing them say as we rode the 50 minutes to Springfield, IL.  All I kept thinking was "How would I ever pass a volleyball again or put on my uniform without being made fun of?"  The only thoughts possible from a 20-something athlete's mind.  When I reached the quarantined burn floor I saw things that I thought only happened in movies.  Children behind glass doors with no flowers, no balloons.   No stuffed animals only doctors in sterile gloves, masks and white coats.  It was a dream I kept telling myself.  At least until I saw my name on my room and those same doctors in those same white coats, waiting for me.

I will say I had incredible nurses that gave me incredible pain killers and the next thing I knew, I was wrapped from head-to-toe with a distinct feeling that it was Halloween and I was a mummy.  (Had to have been the meds).  Un-introduced doctors rushing all around and then finally, familiar faces appeared as my larger-than-life mother and usually stoic father entered the room.  I won't cry I kept telling myself, I won't cry... Surgery they said.  It was the only way to give her back what skin she had lost. 

 But at 20, tears don't come from pain.  Tears don't rush out from agony.  Tears don't fall from fear. 
At 20, my tears fell from loss; the loss of a life I would never know again.