By Pete Anziano
Husband, Father, Adventurous Spirit, Advocate for Intentional Living, and Trauma Survivor

I woke up still disoriented, the dim morning light filtering through heavy curtains. Beyond the walls, San Francisco hummed, alive with early sounds—a city stretching awake, distant seagulls, a murmur of traffic that felt like a heartbeat. The house was silent; my wife, our young son, and the family we were visiting still lost in the comfort of sleep. I wanted to stay in bed, to pull the blanket over this weight I carried, but restlessness stirred. It was a kind of ache that went deeper than my injury, a sense that my life—this newly rewritten life—sat just out of reach, elusive and unwelcome.

Paralyzed from the waist down, I’d become a stranger to myself in an unrecognizable world. The trip to San Francisco was meant to help, to remind us that life still moves even if our sense of it feels like it’s standing still. But that morning, far from the routines I was struggling to master, I felt like a displaced echo, unsure of where or how I resonated. Each rhythmic touch of my wheels carried the weight of old instincts clanking and creaking, straining to adapt to the newness of this reality, as if searching for a resonance that might one day feel like my own. I couldn’t yet articulate it to myself, let alone to my family; all I knew was the weight of my own transformation, a pressure to adapt not just my body but my very sense of self.

So I slipped out alone, easing down the long, sloping street in my wheelchair, looking for coffee and something else I couldn’t name. The chill of morning bit at my face as I coasted down the winding streets, each push of the wheels a clash between the instincts of who I used to be and the uncharted territory of who I was now. The coffee shop on the corner was warm and bustling, people chattering, lives moving forward as mine hesitated. I cradled the cup in my hands, feeling the heat through my fingers, and for a moment, that simple sensation was grounding. My body may have changed, but here was proof that I could still feel, still participate in the small rituals that tether us to the world.

As I left the shop, a low rumble and the rhythmic thud of footfalls caught my attention. A road race was sweeping past—a wave of joggers moving like a river down the street, a symphony of pounding feet and determined faces. It was the kind of momentum I hadn’t felt in months. My pulse quickened, and, on impulse, I wheeled myself toward them. I dropped in off the curb and slipped into the stream, blending into its current, feeling the rhythmic pull of shared movement. For that mile, I was not a man bound by limitations, questions, or the wary eyes of loved ones. I was just someone moving forward, feeling the weight of my own willpower, invisible yet fully present.

Onlookers glanced over as I pushed alongside the runners, their expressions shifting from surprise to something like admiration. They didn’t know my story, didn’t know how unsteady I was within this new self, and, strangely, that anonymity gave me freedom. I was not the patient, the newly injured, or even the father or husband trying to hold it all together. For those few minutes, I was simply in motion, part of something larger than my struggle—a man pushing against the inertia of his own story.

The race had given me an immersion into pure momentum. I found an unexpected stillness in myself, a space for transformation to breathe deeply. In those moments, I felt like the particle in the double-slit experiment, as though the way I was perceived could shift my reality. By the onlookers’ measurement, I was not broken or bound by anyone else’s understanding of me. I was simply moving, defined by my actions rather than by my story. I was, in some small way, creating myself anew in their perception—a fleeting affirmation that I was not only alive but engaged, and that my life, however altered, was still open to change.

When the race ended near the park, the joggers carried on, their footsteps fading. I broke away and wheeled myself into a quiet grove and sat alone, the crisp air filling my lungs. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, I felt harmony. The city’s noise faded, replaced by the gentle rustling of leaves, a place where the world felt both vast and close. In that quiet, I could feel both the weight of what I’d lost and the pulse of something stubbornly alive, a whisper of my own strength that hadn’t abandoned me. I realized I was more than the sum of others’ observations, more than the worry and cautious glances of doctors, therapists, and even my family. I was existing on my terms, claiming a small piece of my identity back. The ambivalence remained—the ache of loss, the struggle of adaptation, and the passion for more—but now it shared space with something else: the realization that I could still shape my journey, even if only one mile at a time. I was not separate from life’s larger story but a purposeful thread woven into its ever-changing tapestry. My struggle was real, but so was my place in the ongoing act of creation—life itself unfolding around me, through me, and for me.

The way back up the hill felt heavy but purposeful. I was returning to the house, to my family, to the relentless reality of adaptation, but with something new—a small, quiet sense of agency, a sense that maybe I wasn’t just surviving but reshaping. Each push back up the hill was a testament, not only to my survival but to the quiet defiance in every breath, a reclamation of my life on my own terms. There would still be moments of isolation, frustration, even grief, but this morning had given me a different kind of proof. I could find strength in adaptation, resilience in my own quiet defiance. I wasn’t done discovering who I was, and no one—not the watchful, hopeful, or doubtful eyes around me—could take that away. I didn’t fully know the man I was becoming, not yet. But with each burning push up that hill, I knew that discovering him was my journey, one mile, one breath, at a time.