Letter from a paraplegic friend
Sean has asked me to write a short piece for his page and after much procrastination, I am finally feeling inspired to do this for him. I am Louise, he’s referred to me here and there on this site. I’m a 48 year old paraplegic, it’s been 30 years since my SCI due to an automobile accident.
My first exposure to some very different types of people happened here on the net. I became aware of devotees about two years ago, and like most disabled women I was fairly disturbed at the concept at first. Since Sean ‘s site is not related to that topic specifically, I’ll only say that finding out that such an interest exists has made me look very carefully at how I view my own sexuality and how much I apply values I claim to hold when relating to other people.
Specifically, I believe very strongly that I cannot lump people into categories and label them due to their natures or proclivities. I am incensed, for instance, at racism, gay bashing, and especially, at the inherent and widespread exclusion of, reticence in approaching or asexual presumptions about disabled people for no other reason than an accident of birth or circumstance. I’ve lived it, and if I am to be true to myself, I cannot apply negative connotations to anyone because of one aspect of themselves. If I talk being open, I feel like I have to live it.
I believe very strongly that I cannot lump people into categories and label them due to their nature or proclivities.
Sean was really the first person who pretends and has wannabee tendencies that I wrote to or talked with on IRC with. That began about a year and a half ago and I will readily admit, that I had very mixed feelings about wannabees before I met him. I’ve listened and asked, learned to trust the safety of telling my real feelings, and learned to look with a sense of acceptance and compassion on his I think. I see no harm in Sean at all….. not in his pretending…. not in who he is. I see a young man who finds comfort in using his wheelchair, and though he does not physically need it I’ve come to feel that just as it’s a tool for me to function and live more fully, it’s a tool in a similar sense for him to be himself and feel more secure and whole in his own way.
Sean holds a firm, fair, and discreet sense of values in the way he shows that side of himself to the world. He is acutely conscious of how he represents disabled people when he is out in the world with his chair. It matters to him that he causes no harm and I deeply respect that. He is a person who makes it very easy for me to be accepting…. in the way I most want to be… by looking at each person individually and taking each for who he is internally. Sean has become a dear and deeply trusted friend.
Remember that Sean and other’s like him are people first, individuals with feelings and uniqueness (…). They are no less human, no less worthy of the opportunity to show who they are (…) than you are.
We’ve met, visited, wheeled together and found that our faith in who we each are has been justified. When I passed the 30th anniversary of my injury this past year, I had decided that I would do something I’ve wanted to do…. Wanted to face for all this time and couldn’t. I wanted to go back to the place where my wreck happened and confront it, try to bring some closure and sense of peace to it, and to say good-bye in a way to the teenage girl who had strong healthy legs one minute and was paralyzed for the totally inconceivable time frame of "life" a minute later. I had the incomparable good fortune to be able to take Sean with me. He met my family, and because my daughters are very like their mother, knowing about Sean’s chair use, they still welcomed and were totally taken with him. He was patient and still while I hit every local landmark from my life I could possibly think to stop and show him on the way to the accident site, he knew without my telling him how hard it was and that even at the last possible minute I was putting it off.
He held me while I cried, he was there for me, people, there in a way I don’t think there are more than two or three other people on the face of the earth I could have shown that level of vulnerability to. Take a lesson from this if you will, listen to the one contribution I can make to Sean’s site that is unique to me. There are all kinds of people in every segment of population, ….. ones with cruel or gentle natures, honest ones and one’s I’d term politely "pond scum"…. frivolous people, shallow people, truly dear and warm people…. so if I can choose to make any one contribution to his site, this is it…. Remember that Sean and other’s like him are people first, individuals with feelings and uniqueness, strengths and weaknesses, virtues and faults. They are no less human, no less worthy of the opportunity to show who they are intrinsically than I am, than you are.
If you cannot be open to differences you may cheat yourself of potentially precious and dear human contact, and you certainly cannot expect other’s to be open and accepting of you. So there you have my basic philosophy in a nutshell. I hope you’ve found it palatable and understandable…. I hope it may contribute just a little to some real understanding. There is never enough of it in the world.