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Home / Stories / Personal Histories / Sean's Story / My Story 3

My Story 3

Written by Sean on Wednesday, January 1, 1997

I thought it was time to write a third part to my story, as there has been a lot happening in the last few months. I seem to evolve and learn about myself more and more, and the more I learn, the more I want to learn and the more I realize the field is deep!

You most probably have been following the Thoughts of the Moment on a regular basis, so you have a small idea of where I’m at right now. But there are other things, that I haven’t talked about. Short summary.

In the last six months I have met quite a few people and that was good and fun. I also have told many close friends and family about my interest. It seems I’m on a ride I can’t get down off. I told all my close "real life" friends about it, not that I have that many, perhaps 4-5 that are really close. I also told my father and my mother about it. I am getting more comfortable with myself, less self conscious about who I am and how I act.

Only a few days ago I came back from a two weeks holiday with a dear friend. We spent two weeks doing a whole lot of nothing, but most of it was done in my chair. Everywhere we went I was using it. It was such a good experience for that, to be able to give free course to this other part of myself that rarely has a chance to get out completely. The visit was good for other reasons too, but I won’t get into that, as they aren’t chair related. Thank you my friend.

Also, right at the beginning of that holiday, I stopped to visit with another friend, she’s a para (it sounds like I am bragging about it, but believe me, I’m not). Slightly more than two days with her was a great experience… Again, just meeting a friend was an end in itself, but she offered me a chance to grow and learn and that was a definite bonus. It’s amazing how much it helped me to have her accept me, and my chair like that. A very good validation of the fact that it’s ok to use the chair. Not that in the end I needed her acceptance, but to have it helps me accepting myself more/better. Thank you my other friend.

You probably wonder why it was so good to use the chair “unbridled”… It just was a good respite to not have to hide myself. To be able to sit in the chair when I thought it was time to do so and not have to worry about what the people I am with will think. And that is one thing I am heading towards, telling all my close ones so I don’t have to hide anymore. Not that I intend to use my wheelchair around, say… my father. But to have him know about it is a great relief. It is one secret I don’t have to hold anymore. And his reaction to it (which I am still waiting, he promised to write back and asked for some time to produce a decent response) is not in my hand or imagined in my mind anymore. If he reacts badly, it’s his problem now… A great enlightenment that is, for me anyway…

The same goes for my mother (I am to meet with her next week and talk about all this) and the other friends and family I have told. All in all I created a lot of surprise, but everyone that responded to me so far was either indifferent or had a reaction that amounted to: "It’s your life, you do what you want, just don’t be stupid and go on hurting yourself".

Ohh yes, of course, there were a couple people that didn’t take it well, girlfriends to be precise. In a way I think they didn’t react well to it because I wasn’t accepting of myself then. Add to that the feel of hurt created by my apparent lack of trust in not telling them right away, and you get a very hurt and p*ssed girlfriend that doesn’t want to have anything to do with you anymore. "Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait" (If the young knew, if the old could).

So with all the people I have been meeting and all the ones I have been telling, I am more than ever in the open, out of the proverbial closet. And it sure feels good.

I do think that somewhere along the lines I realized that I was much more of a chair user by choice than a devotee. My interest in other chair users are rather from a peculiar form of envy rather than (sexual?) desire.

I also picked up a certain timidity about sharing some things with some people. While I open up and tell more and more people I know about myself, I hesitate more and more about sharing sources of knowledge with everyone and their brothers (or sisters). I guess I am just tired of the bad image and reputation some individual create for our community by being generally insensitive and lack respect for the disabled community. I don’t know that I really can help much at all, but I guess somewhere within I think that this odd desire for selected censorship will be positive in the end… Then again, knowledge fights ignorance and if the insensitive people learn more, perhaps they would be able to change… Arghhh… There is no right answer here, so I will just keep on being me. How’s that? :-)

The more I accept myself, the more I realize that I have a vastly diverse supply of interests. I’m not going to go into those in details, this is not the place. But I want to say that when you get rid of an issue by accepting what creates it, you then leave space for another thing to come to your mind, and then you work on that… This is good, I get to learn more of myself, and better like this. And you know what? I actually like what I see… Not always, but mostly.