These are the brightest lights I’ve ever seen.  The bleach white walls and smell of disinfectant make me think I am on an episode of some cheesy soap opera:  adolescent strives to be adventurous but ends up paralyzed from the waist down.  Hearts are broken.  Dreams are lost.  Her life is forever ruined.  But soap operas are usually a load of crap, and never see the silver lining.
The people who raise you and the environment in which you are raised tend to outline the rest of your life.  My parents are grade-A risk-takers, adventure enthusiasts.  Where most people would search for peace and belonging, Tina and Paul would search for spontaneity.  We lived on the beach, in a town that always seemed much too small for my parents.  Our bedtime stories were not from pages in books, but from the chapters of my mother and father’s memories.  The sunflower yellow walls of our living room were decorated with images of my brothers and I, the typical first birthday portraits and the likes.  My favorite part of the house, however, was always my parents’ room, where the electric blue walls were barely visible behind polaroids from their past life, free from the manacles of parenthood.  Staring at these walls, I was able to imagine myself where they had been: on top of mount Everest, froloking in South American jungles with indigenous tribes, and taking in the world below me as I plummet from an airplane.  My parents treasure every moment they have with their children, which is why they traded in parachutes for baby bags and plane tickets for college deposits.  But on warm, sunny days, when the world seemed to offer so much promise, I would catch a glimpse of longing in my mother’s deep ocean eyes, or hear memories in my father’s distracted humming.
I was a quiet child, a complete wonder to my eccentric parents.  One afternoon, I was immersed in a novel during a long car ride to a surprise destination.  My mom, who had been staring out the window for hours, suddenly told me to put my book down.  “Audrina, I won’t allow you to miss the real world for one that only exists on the pages of that book!”  I unwillingly set my book down, doubtful I would find the passing view as special as my mom did.  “Mom...we have been passing the same trees for hours now!”  We were in the middle of the Ocala National forest.  You see one scraggly pine, and you have seen them all. My mother, her ocean eyes still focused on the blurred forest, sighed,  “That’s not the point, Audrina.  What if it suddenly changes?  You’ll miss the beauty of something unexpected.”  That day I began to live my life as a different person.  I put down my beloved Hemingway in hopes of leading a life like those of my parents.  I aspired to tell stories of my past, not of someone else’s. 
I was extremely nervous to ski down the Alps, past precarious rocks and drops only blocked by caution tape.  But I took the plunge, because it’s what my parents would have done; it’s what I thought I desired to do.  I regretted my decision as soon as I edged too close to a boulder, unable to stop my skis because I had wanted to be spontaneous (and ski lessons were the opposite of that).  Here I lay a month later in a hospital bed, still trying to move my toes, but I am surprisingly satisfied.  I am back where I was in the car ride, before my mother told me to put down the book and live adventurously.  I am once again drawing my happiness from the wells of my mind, from the words in my hands, and from the people around me.  My mom asked me how I could be so happy, imprisoned by my own body.  I looked at her and simply replied, “Because not everyone needs to look out the window.”