I was still conscious when I was being transported from the blast site to the hospital.
— Jeff Bauman
Isolation is huge when you go through something traumatizing. You tend to want to isolate and kind of hide in your hole and kind of just go away.
Sometimes I think, 'Maybe I could have a drink or two.' But then I think about it, and I just don't want to. It's just not in the cards. I know what I feel like now that I don't drink. I know what it feels like not to be hungover, trying to put my legs on.
Everyone kept saying, 'The terrorists didn't win. You won! We won! You survived!' That's just weird to me. Nobody wins in these situations. I don't see winners and losers in tragic events.
Why sit, be negative and be sad and depressed? You got to kind of push everything to the side and just focus on just getting better.
I'm scared. Seeing my life being told in a movie. That is nerve-wracking.
I just want to be a good dad.
Sometimes walking to the end of the street with my prosthetics feels like running a mile.
In my eyes, there's heroes I look up to. People who saved me - my caretakers, people at Boston Medical Center. My surgeon. The people that pulled me off that ground, who pulled me out. Those are my heroes. The police. The paramedics. Those are the true heroes.
By some crazy twist of fate I was able to remember the moments leading up to the bombings, and in the end, it helped people. I'm not a hero; I did what any normal person would do.
I just want people to know that I'm OK, and if I can get through something this traumatic, anybody can get through what's going on in their life.
I don't know, I'm just a weird person like that, I'm kind of sensitive and I feel bad for people that hurt other people 'cause it's just awful.
I'm doing great, and I just gotta keep going.
There's always gonna be some pain, I think, because my body's going to be like, 'Where are your lower legs?'
Everyone deals with loss.
Even now, a year later, people ask me about the Wheelchair Photo: what do I think about it? Does it bother me? The honest answer: I don't think about it. I glanced at the photo once, about a week after the bombing. I knew immediately I never wanted to look at it again.
I don't drink and I don't party. And I take care of myself mentally, and that's huge.
I took my hand off the pause button. I had my life on pause. You get stuck, especially when you're drinking and isolating. I started homing in on what I wanted to do as a person. Just try to grow up.
I realized I had to work on all aspects of my recovery, the spiritual, mental and physical.
Sometimes I don't fully accept it. It's tough. I miss doing old things. I miss shooting hoops with my friends.
Even in the ambulance ride I was trying to say something, trying to say, like, 'I knew who did it, I knew what went on.' And then I think they were kind of thrown back by that. They were like, 'What? You know what went on? You know what happened?' And I was like, 'Yeah, I saw the guy.'
I got myself into trouble. I was drinking and partying a lot and it caught up with me.
I consider myself really lucky every single day. To the point where I feel guilty a lot because I have so much and so many other people don't have what I have.
I was a normal guy with a job at Costco, thinking about going back to school. I played sports; I hung out with my friends. I wanted to make something of myself, but I didn't know what.
I don't like being called a hero.
Hero.' I've always struggled with that word. I'm just a guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
My nerves are always, you know, shooting off and it's just, you know, it's very different.
I see my family every day and I'm starting my own family now. I'm very thankful and grateful and there's nothing but positivity and love in my life.
Yeah, I get a lot of donations. It's a lot. I'm getting money all the time.
I want people to relate to my family, and to just getting through something - getting through loss in general.
I have so much work to do every day to get back to my normal life that I can't afford to be angry, even at the bombers. I can't keep looking backward.
I remember when the photograph was taken. The famous one, I mean. The one of me being rushed from the Boston Marathon bombing without my legs.
I'm a great father.
I have bad days, days when I just don't want to do anything. Just kind of want to lay in bed.
Right when I was lying on the ground and saw my legs, I didn't think first, 'I'm going to die.' I was thinking, 'I'm not going to run again. I can't play basketball. I'm not going to skate.'
I really want to do something great. I want to be out there, I want to help people.
At the end of the day I just want to be a normal guy, hang out with my daughter, go to school, and work on prosthetics.
I want to show people you can overcome a tragedy.
Knowing that I might be encouraging others by facing my own difficulties is what helps me get out of bed in the morning.
She liked to drink. Some in the family want to make more of it than that like maybe she needed drinking to take the edge off, but that was the way I always saw it: Mom liked to drink.
For so long I focused on all that I had lost - my legs, my anonymity, even my freedom in a way. I couldn't jump in the car, blast some music and just get away for a bit. I couldn't play basketball with my brothers. I couldn't even get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom without making it some sort of production.
I don't think I'll ever get used to seeing my face next to Jake Gyllenhaal's.
I know exactly when my life changed: when I looked into the face of Tamerlan Tsarnaev. It was 2:48 P. M. on April 15, 2013 - one minute before the most high profile terrorist event on United States soil since September 11th - and he was standing right beside me.
I'm just glad I'm still here.
I just want to get to the places I can't get in the wheelchair, you know? I want to stand up.
In the movie, I deal with the loss of my legs and adjusting and trying to become a new person, essentially.
I wish I wasn't the face of the victims - three lost near the finish line and hundreds injured - because then everyone would forget about me, and I could recover in peace, and at my own pace.
