Thursday, April 26, 2018

WALKER TO WHEELER -- 4


By Heidi Johnson Wright

I had to admit that the wheelchair’s very presence eased my mind. I was comfortable using it in my dorm. I lived in my university’s gimp ghetto: the only floor of the only dorm accessible to girls with disabilities. I was among friends.

Still, I had to mentally sort out for myself exactly what relationship I would have with the chair. But the rules I developed for when and where to use the wheelchair were crafted not strictly by common sense. I was fighting a very personal inner battle about how I saw myself and how I wanted others to see me. There was something about planting my butt in that chair that seemed to lower my status as a potential friend and more importantly, girlfriend. The bottom line was this: wheelchairs were boner Kryptonite.

If I had a major spinal cord injury, I’d have to use a chair for mobility – there’d be no room for debate. But I inhabited a realm betwixt those who walked all the time and those who never did. There was no “how-to” guide for someone like me, or at least I’d never seen a book titled Sometimes Your Ass Walks, Other Times it Rolls: a Guide to the Wheelchair Netherworld.


It was all pretty ridiculous, since even when I was up and walking, I would never be mistaken for an able-bodied person. Standing or seated, I was still a gimp. But to a lot of people, a wheelchair is a prison, a sign of tragedy, a symbol of defeat. The chair is as a mechanism of freedom and empowerment that can make the difference between getting an education or not, holding a job or sitting at home, exploring hillside towns in Spain or never traveling beyond one’s front stoop.          

Serialized from New Mobility Magazine Digital

http://newmobility.unitedspinal.org/NM_Mar_18/#?page=34

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