I was innocently not wearing my glasses…didn’t see the gates of Holy
Cross were shut and there were a load of 12/13/14 year old type kids
hanging around. I had my earphones in and they’re at that arsey age
where it’s all “lol there’s a girl in a wheelchair” (Yep, this is coming
from lil’ miss “i don’t have a chip on my shoulder”, but honestly the
early teenage years were a nightmare it’s just because everyone’s
embarrassed about themselves and each other so a wheelchair makes it
even more embarrassing!) Anyway…so I looked like a tit anyway, looking
at a gate and then turning around the way I’d come and I saw them
staring and sniggering. I swallowed my “whatever it is” and carried on
then all of a sudden this little twat on a bike came whizzing behind me
screeching trying to made me jump. Because I had my earphones in, at
first I didn’t think he’d meant to do it purposely to make me jump, but
he turned around laughing thinking he had done. He came riding back
straight at me, I was out of breath to have a go, I was pissed off and
if I’d have said anything it wouldn’t have got anywhere. So I just gave
him a dirty look that he was surprised at. Why? He was about 12 and I
could knock him off his bike, punch his lights out and make him cry with
the things I could say to him. I don’t get it sometimes. I went to
Albany, and I can remember at first, well my first memory of entering
the school hall was just like that scene of Harry Potter, but everyone
was whispering “It’s that girl, the girl in a wheelchair.” Thing was,
when I started High school, no one knew me. No one knew me there before
my accident and no one had known me after. I was a completely new,
different person both to them and myself and I spent about 2 years
struggling and trying to figure how I could ever even attempt to be me.
Well, I got there eventually and people accepted me for my mad, loud,
annoying personality and wheelchair that they all forgot about once I
could accept it. That’s what confuses me in these instances, I still get
insecure around people, especially young teenagers who clearly are
innocent and just don’t know how to react to someone who’s not
attempting to be within the borders of one extreme to the other that
teenagers live in. They’d only not react in this way, if people like me
were classed as “normal” but no one’s normal…you just have to be you.
And that’s one thing that is so hard about being a young teenager, you
struggle to “be you” because you don’t necessarily know who “you” are
and you’re not sure how everyone else will react…
So that’s why they reacted to me?
I’m not sure I accept the whole able v. disabled thing.
My friends know that.
I
think society has passed that stage, and people (which probably is a
majority of people) who still see disabled people like me as
misfortunate/funny/weird/pathetic only think that due to lack of
openness, honesty and education.
So how can I stop this “sniggering?”
Well I can’t do it single handedly, and I’m not going to start a march
down the bypass…the only way “we” or “you” or whoever, able bodied or
wonky with wheels can actually make people aware and think is by going
out into the world and being you. Now, i know it’s bloody hard at times.
There’s so many obstacles for everyone and there’s things that need
improving. As a person with a spinal cord injury, in order to be
independent I need the tools, I need the chair, the ramps, the
accessible “low down” things…But I can only get it by going out into the
world and asking for it and being me, not by hiding away, sitting in
doors and shouting about it. I know how sometimes, that’s all you want
to do, but it doesn’t work for anyone. I can vividly remember being
about 10 (before I was injured) on my bike, leaning on the handlbars and
staring into space, feeling alone and lost watching my Mum and Dad
doing the garden and my Mum said to me “Don’t sit around, no one will
help you and you won’t help yourself sitting in a corner”. Now, I’m not
trying to sound like a Tory, and to prove it I’m gonna write hear and
shout in a metaphorical way about how people need the financial support
and what is happening to DLA is disgusting and without it, people like
me won’t be able to live the independent lives we lead because it’s a
tool. Sadly, money is a tool that we all need to buy bricks and build a
life with. But we wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, without just
getting out there and being ourselves, whoever we are, wherever we’re
from.
One day, that annoying little arse on a bike will see me again,
might even be tomorrow, but no, one day he’ll see me and might just see
me as another human being exercising…If I decided not to push that
route again, because of it his prejudice and insecurity has won.
So…I know where I’ll be tomorrow night!
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