Surprise! I'm Different ;)

When you have a disability, there are a lot of assumptions that are easily assumed if you are not quickly informed. Or ~warned~, as I have been told in the past. Ability is one of the most taboo topics in this whole world, and unfortunately I, an educated, 19 year old Michelle Obama wannabe, am one of the poor, unfortunate souls.

You see, I have Cerebral Palsy, or CP, which is a muscular spasticity disability. I was diagnosed with CP when I was nine months old because, unlike normal babies, I couldn’t crawl and sit up by myself. CP is caused by a lack of brain cells in a specific part of the brain that sends messages to the muscles to move. While in utero, something happened where I lost oxygen and the cells died. Because of this, my muscles are not as strong because the message pathways are dead, and therefore have to find a new way to communicate.

However one big myth that many people believe about CP is that it also affects my cognitive and social abilities. My whole life, I have experienced doubt about how I think for myself, about the level of education I am at, about my ability to deal with relationships and even do basic, menial tasks. Even a student in the same class as me asked me if my disability was going to keep me from staying at Barnumbia. This same student then proceeded to ask me if “everything still worked in the bedroom”, as if my body is there for his own sexual curiosity. The questions follow from male specimen, left and right. To name a few:

-Do you feel your vagina? Is sex numb to you because of your legs?

-Does your disability makes you a bigger target for sexual assault since you can’t run or fight?

-Are you worried people laugh behind your back? Stare at you?

-Isn’t Barnard/Columbia hard? Are you their token wheelchair kid for alum?

I am, in fact, a hopeless romantic; my favorite movie is The Princess and the Frog and yet I’m 19. Yet, it seems that having a relationship with my disability is slim-to-non existent. If I had a dollar for every time someone has turned me down or ghosted me because my walk made them uncomfortable, or it was embarrassing to their friends/family, or it’s simply ugly and unattractive, hell I’d be neighbors to the Kardashians.

Even if I forget the judgemental boys upfront, the stares, questions, rudeness from people as I go about my day is still hard. I will never be the girl at parties that walks into the room and jaws drop. Well, by amusement maybe, if I trip on my face. I don’t foresee meeting my future husband in a super romantic and public way, simply because I live my life believing that everyone is as ignorant as the boys I deal with now. No college sweetheart (although single Columbia boys, please hit me up), no random neighbor/stranger on a train, no mystery man at a bar.

My mother always says that I was an outgoing girl and shone as bright as the Evening Star (watch Princess and the Frog, get the reference). What changed is the amount of rejection I have faced daily simply from a disability that I had nothing to do with. Maybe someday that will all come back?