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A Chairless Weekend
Written by Claire on Wednesday, November 15, 2006
I’ve had my chair for over a week now, although honestly, it seems now like I’ve had it forever. We’re currently out of town for a few days, and I had to leave the chair at home. I’m feeling some separation anxiety.We’re visiting a town that’s a 6-hour drive from home. As we pulled out of the driveway I already regretted not bringing the chair. It would have been impossible to bring it, because the kids are with us, but still… For the first half hour I fretted about it, to the point where I wrote my husband a note (so the kids in the back seat wouldn’t hear): “I miss my wheelchair!!” He looked at me askance and said somewhat incredulously “it’s still going to be there when we get back!”, but that wasn’t the point. He’ll never get it. They never get it. Still, I try to share what I’m feeling with the man who promised to love me come what may. More for his sake, than for mine. His wife is mentally ill, and he needs to understand that.
The next several hours in the car were difficult. The forced inactivity of the drive in the car gave me way too much time to think. Normally, I can be pulled away from my transabled thoughts with enough outside stimulation; work to be done, a chat with a friend, something interesting going on. I sat in the car, looking out the window, pensive, thinking about the chair. How it feels like it’s a part of me, how I’m getting so that I can’t wait to get back to my office so I can sit in the chair (as if my Internet addiction wasn’t enough), dreaming about my pretending trip next week, trying to figure out how to go full time and get away with it. No real answers there, just my mind going around in circles, as usual.
We’re in a town that I love. It’s beautiful, historic, much to do. I have been looking forward to this trip. And I am enjoying it. Yesterday we spent the day going all around town, and though it was fun, and interesting, there were so many moments that were spoiled by my transabled thoughts.
I want to go that way
Visiting an old, historic facility that has been turned into a museum, and taking a guided tour, the tourguide asked if anyone needed to use the elevator because we would need to descend a few steps. The wheelchair thoughts start up again, and the rest of the tour I wished I was experiencing the tour in a wheelchair, my mind half on the tour.
Strolling through the local outdoor food market, we encounter a paraplegic man coming from the other direction. I spy him from quite far away and have lots of time to ponder as he comes towards us. My husband and I studiously don’t look at each other. I try not to look at the para. The para goes about his business, oblivious to the emotional turmoil he’s causing, and the rest of us feel the strain of trying to act normal. Wheelchair thoughts kick in. Devotee thoughts kick in. My body does that thing it does, every time, heart starting to pound, breath coming quick.
We go up a flight of stairs to enter a building and my youngest child decides to run up the winding wheelchair ramp instead of following us. My oldest yells “Look, Keith is handicapped!” I smile in spite of myself, and my husband looks at me out of the corner of his eye, guaging my reaction. I shouldn’t have smiled. I don’t dare try to correct my oldest child’s language and point out that we don’t say “handicapped” anymore, not in front of my husband. I say nothing. I start wishing I had been able to go up that winding ramp, in my chair, and how much fun to go back down.
Really, none of this is new. I’ve always had these kinds of reactions to such situations. But going through it all with a husband who knows what’s on my mind, and having an actual chair at home, with the possibility of doing these kinds of things in my chair, someday, has added a whole new dynamic to it.
It was definitely more comfortable having these kinds of thoughts privately with no one the wiser of the turmoil in my head. I don’t enjoy sharing these moments with my husband and they increase the stress I feel when going through them. They create moments of tension between us that otherwise wouldn’t have existed. I don’t regret telling him, though, in spite of that, because I had to tell him in order to get my chair, and use it, and take it out of town with me on trips alone.
And, strangely, there is an added dimension of hope. A realization that now these dreams and thoughts, instead of seeming forever unattainable, are actually not as impossible as they once seemed. Someday soon, I may be in fact able to take a tour in my wheelchair, or zoom down a winding ramp, or share a conspiratory smile with a random wheelchair user met on the street, and be included, however briefly, in his world.
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4 Comments
2 On 16 November, 2006, Sophie said:
I’d prefer not define myself as mentally ill thankyou very much, mostly cuz of the negative social stigma that label has to it.
3 On 17 November, 2006, Claire said:
Sophie, that’s fine, to each his own. But without such a definition, or one similar to it, you’re unlikely to ever get your surgery.
4 On 17 November, 2006, Sophie said:
Lol, I’ll tell the surgeon whatever he wants to hear short of denying the way I feel to get that surgery.
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1 On 15 November, 2006, Sean said:
I can relate to that stiff moment where you’re with your spouse and come across a wheeler. The first long term girlfriend I told didn’t take it all too well, but before we split up, I distinctly remember coming across a woman in a wheelchair. We made a point of talking about anything but that. Uncomfortable moment for a while.