Am I Fucking Crippled Enough For You Now?

All my life I've been told I'm not crippled enough.  No, you can't have a wheelchair that's paid for by insurance, because you can walk.  No, we won't set you up with vocational rehab before high school like we're supposed to because you're smart and besides, what can voc rehab really do for you anyway?  You need to stand up and teach, because you can, never mind how hard it is, because they won't respect you, you know, if your butt is in a chair.

Well let me tell you something.  I use four different mobility aids, and all of them my parents had to pay for out of pocket, except the one that was paid for by a charity, because I'm not fucking crippled enough for insurance to pay for them.  They say I'm not crippled enough even though I can't walk much beyond my front porch without being terrified that I'll fall on my face, and only a bit past that without collapsing in heap of exhaustion and pain.  They say I’m not crippled enough because it doesn’t matter if I need those things to go to school or get a job someday, because don’t you know, cripples aren’t supposed to leave their houses.  They’re not supposed to live a life.

You know those statistics they always quote; about how expensive it is to raise a kid like me?  Yeah, they’re all true. But that’s not my fault, and it’s not a reason to commit genocide and wipe out an entire group of people before they even exist.  If those statistics tell you anything, it should tell you that we’re failing.  As a society, we are failing to provide those inalienable rights; life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Because those pesky little rights are only for the privileged in this day and age.  Who are you to tell me that I don’t deserve those rights?

I’m not a patient person by nature, and I’m sure it’s made worse by this age of instant gratification in the form of microwaves and iPhones and information just a click away.  I will not – I cannot – wait while some unknown agency decides my fate, decides whether or not I’m worthy, whether or not I deserve the rights and privileges that able-bodied people take for granted.  I need those rights now, not months or years from now.  In an ideal world, I would have had a power wheelchair with power recline and possibly tilt years ago, complete with a button that shrunk it so I could put it in the car, any car, or carry it in my purse when I’m walking only to whip it out when I need it, anywhere, anytime.  But this is not an ideal world.

Is it any wonder I want to live in the Harry Potter universe?  Surely in this fictional, magical world, they’re less cruel to people like me.  Even if they’re not, magic would certainly make things easier.  Doesn’t that tell you something?  That our society is so flawed that I’m begging to live in a fictional universe just so I can live.  I’m alive, but without a wheelchair, without my walker, without my cane, I am not living.  If there is a God, he (or she!) should be ashamed of this world he has created. 

(I don’t, actually, believe in a God, and this is one of the reasons why.  But my atheist musings can be saved for another post.)

Am I fucking crippled enough for you now?  Have I crossed some arbitrary line, separating the true cripples from the fake cripples?  I don’t know what I have to do to prove myself to you.  And I refuse to play your game.  Someday, playing your game may be necessary for my survival, and I will cross that bridge when I come to it.  But for now, I am lucky that I have family who, though they can’t really afford it, will sacrifice and scrounge to get me what I need.   I am declaring that I am crippled enough, and that’s not going by anyone’s standards but my own.  I am a fucking cripple and I am fucking proud.