Blog > Thoughts > Other's Thoughts > Elisabeth's thoughts > Let The Wheels Roll
Let The Wheels Roll
Written by Elisabeth on Sunday, January 10, 2010
[Note from Sean: The following is an introduction post for Elisabeth, who has been following the site for about a year now. She promises to write regularly! Welcome aboard :) ]
What a beauty! Painted my favorite purple colour. Made in Switzerland.
"Mommy, mommy, can we get it? Please, please?" My oldest is demanding. "Are you sure?" "Please." "OK then", I agree. Now I can blame my purchase on my kids. I don’t think my husband would be happy with an explanation that for $35 it was a great bargain. After all, a new one like that is around $3000.
My first wheelchair. A nice sporty one, no clunker. And cheap.
Perfect, just in time.
The previous week I started using the store wheelchairs. Couldn’t contain my need any more. And just a few days later, I have my very own. The next day I sneak into Walmart for a little spin. And the high comes. And the satisfaction of finally feeling myself. Will have to come up with an explanation for my husband why I would like to use it for a while. A little research into people’s reactions? Broadening my horizons? Making a website about accessibility of our town? He accepts those explanations and I start wheeling. Every day, when I go on my errands in the morning. "Foot problem", is the initial explanation for people who know me and ask. A few weeks later I realise I won’t be using my wheelchair for just a couple of weeks. The need hasn’t diminished. Have to come up with another explanation. "I am OK. I just need to use it sometimes."
It’s been two months since I started wheeling. Two months of waking up in the morning and looking forward to a new day. Two months of living, not just existing. Two months feeling really me. Two months of discovering how the world perceives a person in a wheelchair. Two months of sitting down and standing up for my real me and for the world of disability.
I am a woman in my 30′, a wife, a mother of four beautiful kids. I am a photographer, a painter of murals, a theologian, a teacher, a linguist … And I have BIID.
So what is my story?
I grew up being taught to never look at a person with a disability. My mother would use the term "invalid", wheelchair users were just tragic people for her. Yet I never bought it as a kid. I was fascinated by amputees. My favorite movie was about a wheelchair user. I would pretend at home to be an amputee when nobody was around. I must have been maybe nine when I started. When I was thirteen, little pretending wasn’t enough. I needed to compensate more. I started daydreaming. Heavy duty one. I would walk the streets with my imaginary friend who was a paraplegic. Trying to find the curbs he could jump was quite a challenge, no ramps at that time. Once at university, I kept dreaming, it became a daily habit and I would live stories in my head. The only time when I felt fully alive was when I became a friend of a blind guy. He was a very funny and positive person (unlike another blind friend who just couldn’t accept her fate), he even taught me Braille. I still cherish my memories of our walks and talks. Still laugh at the blind jokes he told me. Being a devotee was definitely part of me. Didn’t think there was anything weird about it. But pretending was another story. I felt guilty about it, yet kept doing it secretly.
Once I got married and had children, my daydreaming intensified even more. No privacy for pretending but nobody could see into head. I called it my soap opera. I could spent a few hours a day, laying in bed in the morning and at night, sometimes a few hours in the afternoon, just making a movie in my head. You can imagine the main characters. Smart, balanced, talented young people. Wheelchair users, amputees, blind. Man, I could make a lot of money writing novels for devotees. Sometimes I would watch movies like At first sight or Coming home (now Jon Voight could pop a wheelie) and get shivers all over my body. And then, about half a year ago, I watched a movie where they named the reason why a person tried to amputate his leg. OK, there comes google and transabled.org. And for the first time in my life, somebody made sense, somebody (Thank you, Sean) spelled out my feelings. I was not the only one. Wow! I don’t care if I am crazy or not. I am not in it alone. If you really ask me, my daydreaming was much crazier than my wheeling is. My daydreaming was paralyzing (in the bad sense) while my wheeling gets me moving, opens new doors to me.
As I started reading more and more, I decided to stop fighting my BIID. I decided to embrace it and to live it. Because without living my BIID, I am not able to live. Period. I am tired of surviving every day, I want to live every day. And I can live only as myself. And a big part of me is that I have BIID. My BIID is not as extreme as others, I don’t have a clear image of my body. No desire to be a paraplegic, the health implications scare me. Amputee sounds good to me, DAK, very nice. But I don’t have a burning desire to do anything to my body. But I have a burning desire to have a disability. Which I have every time when the door is too heavy. When there is no curb to jump. When something in the store is too high on the shelf. And BIID itself is a disability. When we can’t live it, it disables us. Not just from an inaccessible place here and there. It disables us from life itself. It disables us from ourselves. I want my BIID to be a mere impairment for me. My wheelchair makes it into an impairment. Without wheeling, my BIID disables me. And I am tired of it.
So here I am. I can’t say where my wheels will take me. I can’t say if my need to wheel will be permanent or if it will go back and forth (I would presume the latter). But where I am right now, I will live my life while sitting down. I will patiently explain to people in my church that no, I am not ready to stop using the wheelchair. That I will use it as long as I need to and that I am happy using it. I will keep working on my website. I will start doing some volunteer work. And I will hope that one day my husband, who knows about my BIID, will be able to accept it and see it as I see it: that we don’t have to understand why something is happening to us. But that we can still accept and embrace it, be it a bad boss, physical sickness and pain or mental challenge in the form of BIID.
So here comes my story of BIID to conclusion but my wheeling is really just beginning…
Tags: BIID, Disability, Impairment, Paralysed, Wheelchair
This entry appears in Elisabeth's thoughts, Introductions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
15 Comments
So glad you found us! Many have lived your story, but few can articulate it as well as you have.
3 On 11 January, 2010, Phil said:
When I started reading, a thought crossed my mind: “Do I really want to read it? Do I really want to know the difference wheeling makes?”
Because I am afraid of my BIID – after so many years. In the moment when I admit to myself that I have it, that it won’t go away, and that I only survive as long as I don’t really live it – in this moment, my desperation grows and becomes too big for me.
Welcome here, Elisabeth. You are lucky because you have found the courage (and have the possibility) to wheel, and in my eyes you are lucky because your BIID is so open.
And we are lucky that you have written such an excellent description of how BIID affects one’s life.
Wow, Elisabeth! This is awesome. I love the deep way you have expressed some things: “Without wheeling, my BIID disables me.” That really says it.
The title reminds me of one of my favorite bands, The Cars, and one of their songs “Let the good times roll.” These times in a wheelchair are indeed good. You brought home to me that, no matter how difficult things might get, it never crosses my mind that I’d rather not be in the wheelchair.
Much looking forward to the next installment about your life.
Or, as they say down there in the Big Easy, Laissez les bons temps rouler!
It is very touching for me to read this story, and i feel very fortunate to have such a beautiful person to be my sister!
Love you, wheelchair or not, doesn’t make such a big difference to me, but your happiness does…. :)
@Michaela: It is very touching for me to read what you wrote. It brought tears to my eyes. The world is a better place for your presence.
Many thanks Elisabeth for your wonderful story much of it fits my battle with BIID for over fifty years now. The first forty years were horrible living with this “weird condition” and thinking I was alone in the world. If only Transabled.org and writers like you had existed forty or more years ago what a different way my life might have panned out. Sadly the only way I can see fulltime wheeling being possible for me now is in an Old Person’s Home. Thanks again for your story.
10 On 21 January, 2010, Claire said:
WOW that sounds so much like me!
That was pretty much me about 4 years ago. You would not believe where this has taken me. I really should write a post about it.
Thank you all for your support. I am glad I am making some sense.
@ Claire: I would love to hear more about where you are now and what your journey was. I read your intro and saw myself in it saw much. And I thought I was the only one doing heavy duty daydreaming. Did your wheeling get rid of the soap opera in your head? Because my wheeling did get rid of it. No more need to compensate, no more need to live life of someone else.
13 On 22 January, 2010, Claire said:
Yeah, it did get rid of the soap opera in my head. Weird, that. Although, I am not significantly happier than I was before honestly, because it’s just freed me to spend more time worrying about other things.
Sean, right now the color of my grass is brown.
Lovely to see/read you again Claire :)
You mean you can see your grass? Mine’s been covered in snow since Dec.10
and yes, guess the question below ..!!
Post your comments
© transabled.org - 1994-2012 - All Rights Reserved.
1 On 11 January, 2010, Beth said:
Wow, apart from the fact that you’ve been able to start openly wheeling it’s like you just wrote my story up there… I hope one day I have the confidence to openly wheel. At the moment the idea of openly wheeling scares me more than the idea of never openly wheeling but the balance is changing.