I guess I've already written something along these lines. But even if I did, mentioning this aspect again will be definitely a good use of time. It's difficult to be disabled. And to a certain degree, it's really tough if your parents are not. Obviously the fact mine aren't probably made their life a bit easier in providing for me, besides covering all my so called special needs.
However, despite in my case love has never been a doubt, it's hard to identify with your folks, and especially feel understood by them. You may desperately want to be like them, and use their role model as a means to overcome the challenges of life. Yet, although most issues disabled people face are the same everybody else does, intensity, level of preparedness and timing are usually completely different.
Particularly in my case, this has also happen with all my school mates and siblings, since I've never attended special school in my life. Meaning that chances I'd meet some other disabled guy at school were extremely low. No wonder even today I still feel this urge to fit in, even though by now I'm super aware of how different I am, and also that despite others also see me as such, their portrait of me is of little use to make my life better or easier.
Anyhow, for a big chunk of my life I've been reflecting about what my parents did wrong, because since I've turned 14, life has always been very far away from where I thought it should be. Then I'd come to the conclusion they didn't protect me from others when I needed the most, because they wouldn't fight others when they would point out my differences, and make my world collapse.
In this very painful looking back exercise, I've convinced myself that if they had protected me from these external threats to my identity as a normal kid, I'd probably have felt more secure, and would have been better able to tackle these threats by myself when the time came (and it has come really early).
Although psychologically compelling, I don't really believe that anymore. It's true that feeling I wasn't facing this world alone would have probably made me stronger in some sense. But the understanding they've had that engaging in these fights would only single out my differences even more makes total sense.
In my current state of awareness about my life, I realize they were not the only ones confused about how to treat my differences. For them and all my closest friends, I was truly just like everybody else. Not just because you tend to find close people normal, but also because I did a very good job pretending I was normal.
And honestly I don't think it was such a bad idea to try that. If it wasn't for this effort, I'd probably be even less capable of living in this non-accessible world. But the issue is how much you believe you can get through all the barriers and how failure makes you feel with yourself. I'm pretty sure if I didn't believe I could live a truly normal and fulfilled life, I wouldn't have made so much excruciating efforts.
On the other hand, the gradual clarity about how unlikely I was to succeed, has left me in a tough situation. Because not only all the effort I had made hasn't brought me where I thought it would. At the same time, my success at entering able-bodied world has given me a privileged view of folks around me, going much farther with half the gas.
So now I've reached a weird place in life. Because of all these disadvantages I've had, I haven't got even close to my full economic or social potential for my age and education. At the same time, I know although my disability is said to be stable, in reality it will make me older and more tired sooner than everybody else I'm competing with.
As much as I've learned to detach from the social circus for thinking about my self-worth, I'm dead sure than when I go to the supermarket or when I pay the rent, I won't get special prices for disabled people. This means despite making more effort, I'll get less because of reduced income. And at the same time I'll need more, because of speedy aging and physical impairment evolving.
I really wanted to be optimistic about my life, and hopefully inspire some folks in the process. And I guess whoever watches me pretending my life is normal may get this mistaken impression I've made it. But it turns out I've got much better at math after turning 30, and this problem doesn't have a good solution.
While I want to thank my parents for all the effort they've made, and absolve them from any guilt of raising someone that will face increasingly serious economic issues, despite of a high educational level, I'm afraid I can't provide much hope to anyone right now. I feel my parents and I did the best we could, and still we've failed to overcome this disability related vicious cycle. And some days I just don't know how to carry on along this road.
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