Blog > Thoughts > Sean's Thoughts > The End of the Road
The End of the Road
Written by Sean on Wednesday, October 22, 2008
On and off I’m asked if using a wheelchair makes me happy. It’s a difficult question to answer. Using a wheelchair allows me to not be so UNhappy. But it’s a bit of a curse too. And it seems I’m not the only one to feel this way amongst those I have been corresponding with.
Claire said to me a few weeks ago that she thought "wheeling made things worse", yet she couldn’t stop. I’m a bit like that. I use the wheelchair because if I don’t I’m feeling even more distressed. Yet using the wheelchair raises some frustration – a reminder that I am *not* paralysed. But then, when I use my wheelchair I can *breathe*.
Quite complex feelings.
So is using a wheelchair for those of us needing to be paralysed is also the end of the road? There is nowhere to go after this. Of course there are many steps. The road doesn’t end all of a sudden. You can fade out, go from fresh new ashphalt to old one, and onto gravel, and then packed dirt. You know, wheeling only at home, then part time out of town, then part time in your own town. And finally full time. But what then?
Claire suggests that the reason she can’t stop is because it makes her feel better. She also told me that perhaps it wasn’t wheeling that was bad, that made it worse, but that having wheeled and having to stop was the difficult part.
For so many of us, using a wheelchair feels right. When you sit in the chair, you feel relieved. You feel a burst of energy coursing through you. You feel peace and serenity. You don’t feel so much like a fish out of water. And when we’ve spend decades walking, feeling like that fish out of water, ill at ease in our own skin and that we don’t belong anywhere, to suddenly have that experience of calm and happiness and rightness is something we don’t want to abandon.
Once you’ve tasted what it’s like to be better in your own skin, you don’t want to go back.
Yet, unless you wheel full time, you have to go back, if only occasionaly. And once you’ve experienced the "full time" thing for months or years, the effect wears off a bit. You can’t go back to not wheeling. But you can’t feel as good as you did earlier on.
Last step – paralysis.
So it’s a slippery slope, really. We start wheeling because we feel we don’t have a choice. We feel so happy once we are in our wheelchair, we need more and more of it. To be out of the chair feels alien. But these things are, in the end, only delaying tactics until we can find a way to not only pretend to be ourselves, but finally be that person we were always meant to be.
Tags: Full Time, Paralysis, Wheelchair
This entry appears in Sean's Thoughts. 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.
7 Comments
This is a VERY intense subject for me. I have had a wheelchair for less than four months. Things have gone a great deal faster than I anticipated. I thought I would be able to spin out these delaying tactics for years, gradually adding small increments of wheelchair use to keep me happy enough. But I always want more; a LOT more.
I really have tried to keep the brakes on this. I didn’t understand just how essential I would find using the wheelchair to be for my well being. As long as I can delay going full time, I will still have that last refuge. Fortunately, construction on the corridor and area leading to my office began today. Wheeling through the construction area will be impossible for the next four months. I can temporarily remove from my mind thoughts of going full time.
Ah, paralysis; tomorrow perhaps; today even better. Relief from this torment.
So it seems, all roads lead back to ground zero. But, don’t all facets of life eventually get filed with been there-done that?
Does going the full nine yards, I do not mean surgery, but living 100 percent of the time with the desired impairment make any difference? I am talking in terms of for example wheelchair users being absolutely 100 percent dependent on the wheelchair, public or private, relying on only upper body mobility, etc. etc.
Does this prevent one from reaching the plateau that looked better from the other side of the fence?
4 On 22 October, 2008, Claire said:
On days when I wheel for the whole day, I feel relieved for a while, and then when I get home and start walking again, I feel like crap because it’s another reminder that this wheeling stuff is superficial, and only “on the outside”; there’s no way to really penetrate or attack the real problem.
And yet, could you give up wheeling?
Just to clarify what Sean said, wheeling doesn’t make BIID worse. For me, wheeling has brought up other issues such as guilt and anxiety (over being found out). I’m slowly working through those, but overall, I am not convinced that I’m actually better off having done this. But I keep going, because my belief and hope is that if I do manage to get a grip on the guilt/anxiety, then I *will* be better off.
Wheeling has a calming effect on me. When I’m *in* the chair, I don’t stress over these things. It’s when I’m *not* in the chair that the anxiety hits me. Strangely. I find myself wheeling more and more.
And then, there are my shoulders…I also find I have to strike a balance between what my body can take and what my mind needs.
Honestly, if anyone is considering this…think long and hard. It’s not a joy ride.
5 On 22 October, 2008, Claire said:
This is a VERY intense subject for me. I have had a wheelchair for less than four months. Things have gone a great deal faster than I anticipated. I thought I would be able to spin out these delaying tactics for years, gradually adding small increments of wheelchair use to keep me happy enough. But I always want more; a LOT more.
It astounds me how fast it goes. Two years ago I said that I could NEVER pretend. Within a month, I owned a used wheelchair and was going on occasional out of town trips to wheel. A year later I was wheeling occasionally in a nearby town and walking with crutches in my home town. I bought a high-end custom made wheelchair and own 4 sets of wheels. Now I’m wheeling in my home town and all of my acquaintance knows that I use a wheelchair. Local people with disabilities ask me to hang out with them and ask me for advice on wheelchair purchases. It’s…insane.
Post your comments
© transabled.org - 1994-2012 - All Rights Reserved.
1 On 22 October, 2008, Brice said:
Room to breathe is not a bad thing. If wheeling gives that, a-wheeling we should go. Wish I were in a position to, but I’m happy for those who are.