The last few months I have been conquering a lot of changes in my routine to the effect of how I get to and from my day services and work. While the change at first had made me extremely anxious, it was something that had been made necessary and in turn is a way to be independent eventually.

This change became a reality after for the first time in two decades there were no candidates to become van drivers at the day services. This has been a staple in my life for most of the existence of my time at day services. County paratransit, funded with state dollars, has been around for some time, yet it in general has had a bad reputation for many years. Fortunately, their management has done a complete revival of it over the past few years and as such it has been an exceptionally smooth transition, despite my anxiety initially telling me differently.

When this change was initially made known to me, I as usual feared the worst and the flight factor kicked in, making me want to quit everything and become a dumpster diver for some reason. Deep down, I knew that was not the life that I wanted to live and that I had to give it a chance to see how it would be rather than just abandon everything as I needed to be an example for my peers at my day services as well.

 Throughout the waiting period for it to begin, I was very anxious and took it out on my mother a lot. She took a lot of verbal anguish. Eventually, the change happened, and it was successful. In a way it took away many of the other stressors that we had when we had actual van drivers with the day services and even during the several months when day services staff were filling in. Yes, schedules both personally and within day services have had to be adjusted to accommodate the change, but in the end, everything worked out.

Last month, day services staff notified me and others that when I was ready, I would need to begin to make the transition of the paratransit taking me straight from home to work and return. While I have seen this in action as they transport clients of another program of my employer, it allowed me to see how things go and how easy the transition to this could be. Being that I was losing hours being in the current situation, I was allowed to see the current situation become much better for me.

Now being two months into this massive change to my daily routine, I cannot imagine how things could not have existed without me being in this current situation. It is not as bad as it seems to be or what I have been made to believe. Sometimes we need to put the memories of the past behind us and allow us to see the possibilities of what things that are intended to allow us to be more independent in the community flourish and do what they are intended to do. If something is meant to be there for us and we do not take advantage of it, we have no right to complain when it comes to deciding whether it is to remain in our way of keeping it a part of what we need for us to be a part of what we need to have to live independently in the community.

I had know that there has always been opportunities to expand my ways of doing things and becoming more independent that keeps my work and day services together, yet there has always been a knowing that someday that I would need to let go of my initial fears and let my guard down and do what is needed for me to become more independent in the community.