When you are a disabled kid living in a small town, the
chances of seeing someone else with a disability is rare. The only time I saw someone
like me was when I went to the hospital for therapy or doctor’s appointments.
This was both an advantage and a disadvantage.
By not being around others with a disability, I really didn’t
notice I was different. I was occasionally teased, but generally, I was accepted
by my peers and included in their activities. However, there were times when I
did feel left out, like when they would go for a bike ride and I couldn’t go
because I didn’t know how to ride a bike. I did learn how to ride a bike later,
thanks to neighbor friends teaching me. This made my father cry because he
always wanted me to be able to ride a bike. My father tried to teach me a few
times, but I got frustrated and gave up.
It wasn’t until I got
into high school that I saw someone else with a disability. He and I both had
Spina Bifida and were both able to walk. We didn’t have any classes together,
but we would say hi if we passed each other in the hallway.
It really wasn’t until I was an adult that I was around more
disabled people. After graduating from high school, I worked at a school for
multiply handicapped children (that was the terminology at the time) and I also
worked at a local Arc (formerly A.R.C.- Association for Retarded Citizens) over
the summers. While working at the school, I became friends with a co-worker who
was deaf. We would hang out occasionally after work or on the weekends. After
he left the school, I didn’t really hang out with anyone with a disability.
Years later, I ran
into someone else with Spina Bifida. We knew of each other because my parents
had counseled her parents when she little, but we never really had the
opportunity to get together.
After reconnecting, we would talk on FB and began to become
good friends. Once in a while, I’d go over to her house to visit. In the
beginning, when I would go over to her house, I felt very uncomfortable. I had
never been around someone in a wheelchair and wasn’t sure how I should act
around her. Should I open doors for her? Should I push her? What do we talk
about?
After visiting a few times, I confessed I had felt
uncomfortable around her because of the wheelchair. She told me I shouldn’t
feel uncomfortable around her. She said if she needed help with something, she
would ask, but other than that, she would prefer to do what she could on her
own.
I have read things on FB and watched videos on YouTube where
disabled people are trying to find a place where they belong. Some have birth
defects and other have become disabled later in life due to accidents or
injuries. For people like me, who live in the middle of nowhere, social media
has opened up the world to us. It helps us to be able to talk to other people with
a disability, especially the same one we have. Being able to talk to someone
who has the same issues allows us to de-stress or vent to someone who gets it.
We all just want to fit in no matter our circumstances. However,
there are certain things that only someone else with a disability will
understand. Thanks to social media, it is much easier to talk to others about
common issues.
Have any of you ever felt left out due to your circumstances?
Please feel free to share your experiences and tell us how you dealt with it.
