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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