transabled.org

 

• About
• Login
• Contact
• Accessibility

Google Search:
Web transabled.org Go

 

Home / Thoughts / Other's Thoughts / Chloe's Thoughts / Feeling Normal

Feeling Normal

Written by Chloe on Tuesday, June 23, 2009

I have a craving to be normal. Yes, I know how ridiculous this sounds. I know all the logical arguments about why there is no such thing as normal. Why would anybody want to be normal in the first place? What’s the point? Nevertheless… This craving runs deep.

My partner and I celebrate a string of anniversaries around this time of year. Tomorrow will be the anniversary of our first meeting, our first date. I had invited her over to my place for dinner. Tomorrow we will celebrate by talking for hours over a glass or two of wine. It’s what we do best. We’ll go do the grocery shopping together too. I shall be in my wheelchair. It will make me feel normal.

Usually we go out to dinner on the anniversary of our first phone call. She called out of the blue, neither of us knowing anything at all about each other. This year her right hand was still bandaged and splinted from a bad cut the previous week; she didn’t want to go out. She said the bandages made her feel unattractive.

The bandages came off a few days ago. It was the second in our string of anniversaries, and thus time to go out for dinner. I was coming home from work first, so I was already wearing the left leg brace. I was also wearing a sexy somewhat see-through and cleavage revealing black top, enhanced with a black push-up bra. All that remained to complete my dinner ensemble was the right leg brace and a couple of crutches.

Dinner was lovely. As usual we made each other laugh a great deal. The other customers probably wondered how we find so much to laugh about. They may be none the wiser if they overheard our conversation. My partner makes a lot of BIID and intersex jokes about me. It probably would make no sense to an outsider. It makes me feel more normal to be able to laugh about these things. It makes me feel more normal, and more attractive, to wear leg braces out to dinner.

When we arrived home, my partner went in the basement door and I followed her in. There’s a steep flight of stairs up to the main floor. This was my first time getting up those stairs with both knees locked. Cool! Then we sat on the couch and talked some more over another glass of wine. Alicia likes to caress my leg brace with her foot. It makes me feel more normal that she’s not afraid to touch it.

When I was eighteen my friend took me to his house to meet his family. At that age I was essentially mute except around a few selected people. I managed a weak smile to greet his family, as I hung my head in shame. I was ashamed of who I was. I was ashamed of what I was. Later, my friend told me his family had asked who was that strange looking person. I knew I looked strange. I knew I behaved strangely. I knew I wasn’t normal. I knew I didn’t fit in. Most people at school were nice to me, but I was used to being addressed as "Hey, Freak!" No, I never really got used to it. It hurt every time. Sometimes the greeting would be more elaborate, like "Hey, Freak! I hate you." It wasn’t just me of course. The short kid was addressed as "Hey, Dwarf!"

It makes me wince to see photos of myself at eighteen. The truth is I did look strange. The truth is I was a freak. Ambiguously gendered pre-pubescent eighteen year olds look strange. No point in denying it. Yes, I knew so very well that I wasn’t normal. But I so desperately wanted to be normal, to fit in, to be accepted. How can you do any of that when you don’t accept yourself?

Yesterday morning I was pulling out my favorite kind of diaper, "Depend Underwear for Women." I noticed the warning label on the package: "Like most articles of clothing, underwear can burn if exposed to flame." I started giggling. It was the image of me in a diaper, holding a blowtorch to it, not realising that I might set my diaper on fire. Warning labels are hilarious. I had to share this one with Alicia. My nice wheelchair was already in her car for the outdor concert in the evening. I can’t wheel through the bedroom door in the clunker, so it was parked at the dining table. I just walked out to where she was sitting on the living room couch. She smiled as I told her about the warning label, without looking up from what she was doing on the coffee table. Then she looked up, seeing me naked except for wearing the diaper, and she smiled more broadly. "You need help." "Whaddya mean?" "Exactly." "Don’t you think the pink trim on this diaper is pretty?" "Serious help." We were both giggling uncontrollably as I went back into the bedroom. Okay, I have a "legitimate" reason for wearing a diaper; but it’s funny that it makes me feel normal.

There was room for about twenty wheelchairs in the space reserved for them at the botanical gardens concert venue. I took the space at the end so that Alicia could put her reclining chair on the grass right next to me. Soon afterwards another couple of women sat on the other side of her. We all introduced ourselves; they shared their wine with us; we talked.

Eventually two very old people in power chairs also came to park in the wheelchair spaces. Two thousand people there, and I was the only one in a manual chair. Gotta be kidding me! Where is everybody?

The concert was WAY fun. People were soon getting up to dance. I wanted to dance too, but I felt confused at first. Then I thought "Hold on. I’m in a wheelchair. That means I can dance!" So I did… I’m starting to cry as I write this part. It was the first time I have ever danced in public just feeling like a normal person having a good time; not feeling awkward and self-conscious about it.

Towards the end of the concert there was a song that made me cry. It was about tears and sadness, and pretending that things are okay when you have emotional pain. I was thinking about when I was eighteen, so desperately wanting to be normal, wanting to fit in, wanting to relate to other people. I was thinking that I feel normal now, that being in a wheelchair makes me feel normal, that I fit in. I looked over at Alicia to see that she was crying too.

I stopped for lunch as I was writing this. Alicia and I took the opportunity to talk about that song. She explained why she had been crying. She had been thinking about being in her late teens, when she was a homeless outcast. She was thinking about how she had felt so different from other people, that she didn’t fit in. She had been thinking about how it’s not like that any more, that she had been able to have such a normal conversation with the women who had sat next to us.

We embraced tightly; and wept together.

Tags: Bandages, BIID, Crutches, Diaper, Leg Braces, Mute, Normal, Shame, Tears, Wheelchair

Twitter Updates

Follow me on Twitter