What's worse is that I now expect this reception from every single person I come across. When I can't meet anyone new without spending the entirety of the conversation wondering when the small talk will veer to the painful memory, I start planning exit routes that ensure I run over as many feet as I can on the way out. I anticipate people's judgement before they've even spotted me rolling along at crotch-level. I visualize them asking me to relive the moment when I was lying in bed, not even sure if I would live to see my life go to shit, and I shut them out before they get the chance to prove me wrong. Humanity's prejudice has induced my own prejudice against them. It's a sick kind of poetic justice, but not the deep, introspective kind. It's more like annoying slam poetry.
All this is probably why I'm marrying the first person who could actually see past my wheelchair. That's not a joke. I'm literally about to marry that person. You have to lock down the good ones before someone else takes them.
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