Read Learning to Move Forward: Novella #3.5 for Free Online Page B

I can. In the meantime, make yourself at home.
    I’d originally left the office door open, but the noise and trying to watch what everyone was doing was beginning to give me a headache, so I closed it. I ate half my food before feeling the urge to pull out my notebook and write.
     
    August 7,
    The session with Jocelyn was both eye opening and heartbreaking today. I understand now that I’ve been stuck on the idea of perfection for as long as I can remember. I know I’m not perfect, far from it, but I’ve tried to live up to the ideals of my parents, or at least what I thought they wanted. It all seems to stem back to the day of the accident.
    I can remember the day so well. I was sixteen, had only had my driver’s license for a couple of months. My dad had an errand to run and I wanted to tag along, because there was a store close by that had the perfect dress for the homecoming dance that was coming up in a couple of weeks. I was going to the dance with the quarterback of the football team and I needed to look perfect for him. There I go again with the word “perfect.”
    Dad needed to pick up an item at the hardware store and I’d called the dress shop to have them reserve the one I’d tried on a few days earlier. The color was a deep blue, dotted with a few sparkles. The skirt was shorter in the front than the back, and it was a one shoulder number to flash a little skin. It would pair wonderfully with the suit and tie Mark planned to wear.
    The drive over had been uneventful, with the exception of Dad pressuring me to pick a college. When I told him I’d look into his and Mom’s alma maters, he dropped the push for which school.
    When the errands were done and our packages placed safely in the back of the car, we headed toward home, while discussing possible majors of study. I’d been fuming at the traffic light, wondering why I kept getting pushed to decide my life now, when everyone else just lived it and worried about all the fine details later.
    I’d waited for the light to change, when I heard screeching and a collision that inched closer to us. The next thing I knew, the car jolted, my father called out my name, and everything went black.
    I don’t remember much about the accident scene, only the sound of a collision headed toward us. I woke up in severe pain almost a week later. My mother was on one side of me holding my hand, while she asked Laurel to go get my father and the nurse. I couldn’t understand where I was, why I was in pain, and why they had such urgency in their voices.
    “Lay still, Grace,” my mother told me, putting a hand on my shoulder to keep me from moving as tears poured down her face. “You need to wait for the doctor.”
    I couldn’t understand why she and everyone around me were crying so much and why they didn’t want me to move. I’d asked for some pain medication because my left hand was killing me. It felt like a two ton elephant had been sitting on it.
    A doctor entered and began checking my eyes with a pin light, listening to my chest, and then testing my leg reflexes. He pricked my right hand and arm with a stretched out paper clip, asking me if I felt the sensations. Then he repeated the motion with my left arm, but I lost the ability to feel when he got below my elbow.
    I remember panicking, but he’d assured me that the feeling would come back in time, that I’d probably experienced some nerve damage and they needed time to heal.
    The expressions on everyone’s faces made me question. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
    I was asked if I knew why I was in the hospital and the memory came rushing back that we were in an accident. I looked more closely at my father and saw that he had cuts and bruises on his face and arms and was walking with a bit of a limp.
    Everyone kept looking at me and then each other. Finally, my mother nodded toward the doctor and I was given the news that my left hand and wrist had been crushed in the accident and was beyond