When I Realized I Was Disabled

So, I've worn leg braces since I could walk.

I didn't think anything of it.

I needed them.

Some people didn't

First time I remember going to physical therapy I was four.

I needed extra help with my motor skills

Because I was behind the curve on development

I went once a week for years.

I loved playing outside as a kid.

Sports, climbing piles of dirt, being on a trampoline, swimming, just running around

I was a little slower than my friends and I got tired faster, but they didn't mind me stopping when I needed to.

I barely understand my disability now.

I definitely didn't understand it as a kid.

I didn't think of it as a thing that made me different.

That made people look at me twice.

That made them feel bad for me.

Until I did.

A new family had built a big house in the cull de sac up the street from my house.

The family had a son who was a couple of years younger than my best friends at the time and me.

He always wanted to hang out with us

When he would get to my friend's house, he would suggest things for us to play or do.

Things that I have in fact done with friends

Except this kid would always pause and say "oh no, Billy probably can't do that. He is too slow."

Now I was 9 and gullible and it confused me every time.

I would ask myself, "am I not supposed to do this?"

A seven-year-old rich kid planted the first real seeds of doubt in my brain.

Thank god this story isn't about how fucked up it is that whoever was raising this seven-year-old taught them to pity people for being different from them and then judge them for it.

But anyway, that's how I developed anxiety about being different

I was raised to think everyone's life is a little different, they learn things and do things at different paces.

One person told me I should be worried about why I can't keep up with my peers and I was ruined.

I found it just a little more annoying that my friends were better at athletic things than me.

I started to feel bad that I couldn't keep up when we walked in the woods.

I couldn't even run fast enough to play tag.

Every kid all over the world plays tag.

Now I wonder if people talk about the way I walk when I am passing them.

I remain terrified of any event that requires me to walk past a bunch of people to stand on a stage and then walk all the way back to my seat.

Things like that are my nightmare.

Think about what that means.

Award ceremonies, school plays, graduations, those are all supposed to be happy and celebratory times.

And I dread the moment the spotlight is on me because I walk just a little slow.

So I did what everyone does when insecurity becomes their defining trait.

Protected yourself with humor

I wasn't avoiding sports because they're too hard for me

"Who has the energy to run that much?"

"That's not my thing, what do I look like a pro?"

I told myself I had so many friends and so many people liked me because I was nice funny good company.

Meanwhile, I wondered if my friends all just felt bad for me

I started high school having to be pushed around in a wheelchair.

I was recovering from leg surgery. Objectively it was a medical necessity, and I shouldn’t feel bad about it.

But high school is the most important time in a young person’s life as far as developing into a more complex person. Figuring out where you fit in the world. And I was the wheelchair kid.

Pretty girls pushed me from class to class to get out early and probably for good karma.

They weren’t interested in me. No one was. Not the way a teenage boy wishes a pretty girl would be in high school.

I was a curiosity now.

I moved partway through high school.

New school. New people.

At least where I grew up, I wasn’t always in a chair.

But that was the first impression I made.

So I worked to show people, yes I know I have a disability but I’m more than that.

Like me for me dammit.

I have a disability.

Society is trying to condition me to believe that should limit my life and I need to be taken care of.

I make my own choices.

Yes, before I do something or get myself into a new situation, I have to consider my limits.

Everyone does that.

Next time someone says, “Billy can’t do that.”

I’ll reply, “I can try dammit.”