Rants From The Mind Of A Disabled ‘Child’

A thread from someone else wth Cerebral Palsy on Facebook last night has raised interesting thoughts for me. He was asking advice on involving PAs in private situations.

There is a deep frustration in being forced by life to rely on others when the only thing you want is to be able to do things for yourself, in your own way.

There is also a deep pain in knowing that you are so different from others that they all look at you as something negative or unfair and so they don’t like you or don’t believe that you are just like everyone else.

I came to understand with age that I was my teachers’ first experience of disability and that they all did their best. I came to understand with age that my classmates were too young to know any different.

What I can tell you is this- all most disabled people I have ever met want is to be just like everyone else in every way possible. There is a deep frustration in having limits to work within.

I feel lucky because I have always understood that there is no one to blame for my disability.

Sadly, at every turn, mainstream society teaches us fast that we have to prove our limited abilities and similarities to them if we want to be accepted and liked in their environments. I for one have chosen all my life to prove myself in mainstream environments by keeping every one of their rules that I have been physically able to keep. I have always worried that I would be removed from their environments if I didn’t keep their rules. And I still don’t want to be stared at and thought of as different by the mainstream.

Life experiences shape our personalities. When we are forced to rely on others for so many of our physical needs we learn to express, loudly, (by either words or actions) the only things we have left to ‘do’ for ourselves- our thoughts and opinions and intelligence. (We make great journalists!)

We are forced to involve others in our physical lives because we need the help and so we crave privacy wherever we can get it.

Most disabled people I have ever met hate having allowances made for them. So, finally, I ask mainstream society to let me tell them when I need an allowance made and not to make it automatically.