Image Description: Watercolor illustration of a person sitting alone in a large, pink forest. Person is in the foreground and illustrated very small. The forest is in the background, purposefully painted largely.
It goes unsaid, yet it remains true that the majority of the time people expect it from people their default mental picture of what they are like. When you meet someone online, you try to imagine what they look like–be it hair color, style, eyes, face– but this default human image to come to mind seems to always exclude one thing: possibility.
I have not (yet) met anyone who has opened their mind to the possibility that me, the person they talk to on the other side of their screen, might be disabled. This assumption that who they are speaking to is automatically the standard “normal” looking person leads to surprise that shouldn’t be needed when I tell them I’m disabled. I shouldn’t have to “come out” as disabled, but out of stigma, I feel the need to.
Back in January, I befriended someone via Instagram, and we talked daily. Our conversations were full of memes, jokes, and friendship–and then I brought up my wheelchair. I brought it up as a normal aspect of my life because that is what it is, but at its mention, the conversation was put on hold by the other person and a tension was created. “Wait, you’re in a wheelchair?” they asked. I replied yes, with no other explanation, to which they replied “Why? What’s wrong with you? I didn’t know you were… yeah.”
Ableist stigma exists in the mind before it does in the physical world, and here it was.
“When I imagined you in my head I didn’t think you would be a cr*pple.”
Just at the mention of my wheelchair, the conversation flipped upside down.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t and shouldn’t feel the need to.”
“Oh. ok.”
And that was the end of that.
This person liked me until they realized I wasn’t this “normal”, abled teenager they had pictured in their mind. The second they realized I wasn’t that, it drove them away and into a surprise which they took out on me in annoyance. I was no longer their friend, just a cr*pple. It hurt me and deeply impacted me, especially given they never spoke to me again. The next time I made an online friend via the same app, as we were talking, out of fear I paused the conversation to say the following:
“Sorry if this is random, but I figured you should know that I’m a part-time wheelchair user who has some disabilities.”
After what seemed like forever, the person replied with the dreaded “oh ok”
They didn’t need to explain that they expected and pictured a healthy, average teenage girl who goes to public high school and can walk around the mall, jog down the block, ride her bike to the store, do sports, go out a lot. They didn’t need to explain they didn’t expect a disabled teenage girl with mobility difficulties and sensory processing disorders, panic disorder and PTSD. They didn’t need to explain they didn’t want someone who couldn’t meet their standards of being able to do what I physically can’t; I can’t go out that often, I can’t run much let alone walk long periods of time. What is understandable is a person genuinely not equipped to handle or be with someone who “requires” more help than the average person. What isn’t understandable is being outwardly repulsed by the idea of this person’s “flaws” and being disrespectful. To be rejected for who you are is a pain no one should feel in any way. I’ve taken to the habit of “coming out” as disabled to people when I meet them to sort of get it over with to know if they’re respectful and genuine, or simply another fake friend. I always feel tense when I explain my disabilities to people. I fear rejection and judgment, I fear their disgust or annoyance. No one should need to “come out” as disabled.
Being disabled should not be continuously held to this stigma of the difference set aside and unconsidered by abled people–yet it is. I cannot run, I cannot walk long, I cannot play those sports or run that mile, I cannot walk around that mall or go out every other night. The list of what I can’t do seems and feels infinitely long and unfair, but it does not and should not erase the list of what I can do. I can love. I can feel. I can sing, I can write, I can read. I can laugh, I can hug, I can kiss, I can fall in love, I can draw, I can tell jokes. I can go out with proper accommodations and planning, I can jump and dance, just not for too long. I can play video games and binge tv shows.
My incapabilities do not define my worth or what level of respect I deserve, they are simply something about me I have to live with and learn past and if a person cannot accept that, then they shouldn’t have entered my life in the first place. This takeaway from my previous experiences has given me the motivation to keep going and not let myself fall into more pieces at the rejection of another abled person.
