Last night I waited at the sketchy bus stop for the last bus home after a night at the pub. The pub where my two best friends work, the bartenders all know our names and the band comes to sit with our table after their sets. As a product of a nervous mother, I kept people talking to me on my cell as long as I could at the bus stop, trying to make myself look unapproachable to pervy rapists who, my mother has convinced me, lurk everywhere and are always ready to pounce. I heard drug deals going on behind the clear wall of the bus shelter that I was leaning on. I would not turn to look, because watching a drug deal is also sketchy and they could get the wrong idea and shoot me or something.

Then I wondered to myself, at about 10 to midnight in the bus shelter on a brisk, chilly night, what would happen if I did get shot? Not the basic wondering, because I know there’d be like police and ambulances and hospitals involved, but I mean what would happen to me? What if I was in a wheelchair forever and couldn’t feel my body from the waist down or something?

It’s horrible to think, but I totally wouldn’t want to live. I know, I can feel all the counter-arguments.

Point: But you still have your mind, you’re still the same person.
Counter-point: But I’d be dependent, and that’s awful.

Point: You could still change the world and be brilliant, just from a wheelchair.
Counter-point: That’s assuming I have a supply of people willing to press pause on their own lives to help me live mine.

As fiancé is nearing the end of his training and getting ready for the real job, I’m preparing to be the rock, the one that holds it all together when things get crazy, who rubs his shoulders when he gets home and tells him it’ll all be OK. That can’t happen if I need help washing and dressing myself everyday. I certainly couldn’t rub his shoulders when I can’t reach them.

In the bus shelter, I am standing beside the hipster and the wangster that have since joined my waiting space throughout the course of my imagined scenario playing out in my head. I realize that my imagination has been carried away and I’m relieved that I don’t have to deal with such a situation. As bad as getting shot and paralyzed would likely be, being so dependent on someone would be the counterpoint to the point I’ve been trying to make as a twentysomething: That I can do it, on my own, and if want to come for the ride you’re more than welcome, but I don’t need your help.