About Friendship

Felix Runs for Mary's Meals
6 min readDec 17, 2020

Last week Monday, I got my new botox injection. Not into my face (!), but into my arms and legs. Botox is a neurotoxin that paralyses muscle fibers when it gets injected into certain muscle areas. For me it has very positive effects on my tone and my entire muscular system which is usually constantly cramped. The effect lasts for about three months.

After an injection, my body usually gets very stiff and I thought my exercises on the Lyra wouldn’t be too successful this week. But the longer I walked, the more relaxed my body became. Unfortunately my therapy session came to and end after 41 minutes and we had to stop. But after all, I managed to reach a distance of 1,800m in my session. My therapist and I had to capture this success with a selfie.

On the second picture you might see that I even reached a speed of 3.2km/h. Remember I promised to give everything? Your messages and your incredible donations are such a big motivation for me to keep it up. There’s still another week to go until Christmas. You can still support my run for Mary’s Meals here: marysmeals.org/Felix

Recently one of my best friends, Tassilo, came to visit me and celebrated his birthday with me. In my family, the birthday child gets truly spoilt and so it isn’t unlikely, that he will celebrate his future birthdays more than once at our house (his words)!

We reminisced about how long we have known each other — funnily enough our friendship goes back to the time of those camps in Romania that I already mentioned in one of my other blog posts. We realised that our friendship had always been built on a special foundation than if we had just met at parties, during our studies or in a job. We had travelled to Romania because we wanted to do something meaningful, something good, some “little acts of love” as we call it at Mary’s Meals. But actually, we also had a fantastic time there, we laughed a lot, joked around with our charges and with the team. But from the very beginning on, we were also able to have meaningful conversations about topics that were bothering us and that we wanted to discuss in depth.

Tassilo found out about my accident very soon after it happened and went through days of anxiety, waiting for updates about my condition. As he says, it was the first time in his life that he began to pray properly. As soon as I was back in Germany, he came to visit me for the first time in hospital, together with another friend. At that point in time I was still unable to speak and to be honest, I cannot really remember this phase very well. My friends spent two days with me in the rehab clinic and this was certainly not an easy time for them, to see me in those radically different circumstances. But as Tassilo says, they simply talked and talked, just as in former times. I could not answer at that time, but I reacted simply by laughing or crying. More wasn’t possible. Today, Tassilo says how happy he was that I was not able to stop laughing about a story that he told me and that we had experienced together, a story only the two of us knew about. From that moment on, he knew that I was still the same old Felix.

Visit from a friend in the hospital

Our relationship is basically unchanged, although much stronger emotions have evolved, more vulnerability, a different closeness. We still chat about god and the world. But we don’t beat around the bush when it comes to my current situation. With my close friends I can be and have to be completely honest — as they are with me.

Dressed up for a party!

Pity is out of place. We all know that my life has changed, but we have also learned that our friendships can still continue as before despite the accident. Fortunately, none of them treats me any differently or is hesitant to meet me. And I have tried from the very beginning to be the same friend to them as before.

Unfortunately, I am not able to go to all the invitations that I receive. Some of my friends live far away and I can’t just get on a plane or cope with very long drives. But I try to join in whenever I can. Then my friends are by my side and help me. This can also lead to very funny moments. Once Tassilo and I both attended a wedding. Just as my carer, Andrzej, had got me ready for the church ceremony, Tassilo burst in suddenly and begged forgiveness for the fact that he hadn’t accompanied me back to my hotel after the very merry eve-of-the-wedding-party. This really made me laugh, as who else could have brought me back to the hotel? He just couldn’t remember anything about it. So, it was almost just like in the old days!

By the way: Mary’s Meals is a movement that connects people all over the world. We call it the big Mary’s Meals Family:

the children, the communities, which organise and carry out the school feeding programmes taking on responsibility themselves, the volunteers (mainly mothers and fathers of the children), who cook the food, those who work in the many countries, the organisations that we work hand in hand with, and all of us, who in many different ways help together to make the vision of Mary’s Meals better known and all of those, who support us with generous donations. The great thing about Mary’s Meals is that everybody can help in any way that he or she wishes. Please get in touch, if you also want to join in and help us in our work. Also, through our many international contacts, the best friendships are being made.

Mary’s Meals — a simple solution to world hunger.

Together we can change things! Tell as many people as possible about Mary’s Meals and if you would like to support my campaign with a donation:

Mary’s Meals is an international children’s charity that currently provides over 1.6 million children in 19 of the poorest countries of the world with a daily life-changing school meal. 18,30 € is enough to feed one child for a whole year.

You can still support my run for Mary’s Meals here: marysmeals.org/Felix

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Felix Runs for Mary's Meals

I’m Felix. Since my diving accident I’m bound to a wheelchair. Here I’m documenting my progress in my gait trainer — as a charity run for starving kids in Kenia