Age is a factor, but I think that it is not so difficult to know and understand yourself, even if you are very young. More experience of the world will give you a different understanding, but you can have solid and valid views even now. Of course, I have a long time of using a wheelchair behind me, so I have greater understanding of many things, but that is not only for me. You too can get that understanding, in time :)

I’m sure it’s not the same discover that you aren’t the only person in all the world that spend a lot of time thinking on wheelchairs, dreaming of being a para, being excited when you try to transfer from the floor(my first orgasm was when I fall from an improvised wheelchair because I was trying to pee whith jelly legs,as a para).

It’s not the same for me than for you, you’ll know more thing about living with a wheelchair (or the expectation of having a SCI) as a TATOO in your mind.

This page has been like an open-eyer to me, I’ve been reading as I was understanding a part of mine y thought I could never understand.

I think that it will take a lot longer than a few decades for society to overcome its bias against disabilities. It is inbred to us, from the time we were all living in caves. If you had a disability, you could not provide, you were a burden. Millenias of such history will not be changed very fast. There has been a lot of advocacy from people with disabilities to change these attitudes, and laws in most countries, but it will take a long time still. Probably not in our lifetimes.

And until society in general fully, completely, totally accepts people with disabilities, those of us who wish/want/need an impairment are unlikely to be accepted. We challenge their perceptions of disabilities. And that’s not something most people are ready or willing to have challenged.

ah, I’m from Spain.

I think society wants to think it is more open minded, but in fact, it isn’t. Especially because what we want is something that is often perceived very negatively.

I’m not the correct person to talk about it because I’m afraid of sharing this feelings, but if all the world knows what is BIID maye could be a starting point. A lot of years ago the people who says that they were born in a strange body that isn’t theirs, the only thing they could do was clothing with the other gender clothes in their house or in the street when no one could recognise them. The current people thoughts they had a mental illness. But now they can change their gender.

I would like to think that people now is more open minded and the process of accepting in the society transableness doesn’t stay too long.

I wonder that one day I’ll bought a wheelchair, I’ll sit there in the morning and I’ll tell everybody “This is my life, the life I want to live.” and no one will complain, they’ll accept it. It could be good, but first of all I should bought a chair whithout my parents noticing it, and keep it in a safe place. Now the only thing I can do is wheeling throught the house in a office chair with my hands and the walls.

Sorry if my english it’s a bit confusing but I’m not an english speaker.

Boy, that gets me going!! These kinds of situations make me want to advocate even more and take that guy, put him in a dress, and make him live his life that way for a month. Let him see how great it feels to be perceived as something you don’t feel you are. But in the end, he’s probably one of those people who have been through that “ex-gay reparative therapy” things, the homophobe!

It’s powerful what can happen when someone who is afraid feels strong. They can either go the positive way or the a**hole way. I guess he flipped a coin.

I/we were all getting a bit concerned i guess, you sounded really really low and i suppose we were all a bit worried you might do something silly, yunno !

Thank God for that mutt of yours.

1 - you cannot possibly understand the hopelessness of clinical depression unless you’ve been there. I’m convinced that problem here is not so much one of transability but of intractable depression that makes the transability unbearable. Depression makes everything unbearable.

2 - you have absolutely no idea of the help that Sean gives to the disabled community in so many ways, but like he said, he can’t list them here. Trust me, he helps people.

3 - if you want to help Sean then I think the best thing you can do is to sincerely and fervently pray for him. He might never appreciate it, but as his friend, I will, and I’ll join my prayers to yours.

@dreamer, acceptance, yeah, well, that is something I’ve considered often in the past. it doesn’t come easy though. In fact, it doesn’t come at all. I don’t know if you’ve seen those, but here’s a couple entries I wrote on the topic:
http://transabled.org/thoughts/accepting-biid-two-levels.htm
and
http://transabled.org/thoughts/stuck-at-the-bargaining-stage.htm

As for helping others as a way to live my dreams… I *am* helping others. But it has no vicarious effect on me. Other than my “work” with this site, I am doing many, many things for people with disabilities (which I can’t list in public).

@Rorschach, I’m not going to kill myself. Though I’ve received private hate mail that told me I really *should* kill myself and do the world a favour and kill this website before I off myself! I do not want to die. But I seriously can’t continue living like this.

Yes, perhaps there is hope, perhaps there is a solution “right around the corner”, but right around the corner is too far. I’ve come to the end of my thether. But one continues to go through the motion.

Sean please don’t kill yourself. You are a beacon to this community and (no hyperbole here) the wisest person I know of regarding this condition. You’ve done a lot for us, and I’m sure that there is much more you can do. We are just beginning to get recognition from the medical community and society at large. A voice like yours is vital at a time like this.

The past thirty years may not have held much hope as far as getting what we want, but with the rapid advances in and growing relationship between technology and neurology a synthetic cure appears much more likely ot become available.

Already neurostimulators are being proposed. A tiny computer chip with attached probes which would be used to treat chronic back pain by interrupting the pain signal being sent through the spine. I don’t know how you could look at this and not see hope.

Simply sitting in my wheelchair has never ever brought any hope whatsoever to me, how can it ?. Relief ? relief from what ?, the frustration, the torment, the desire ?, the notion that by pretending i’m just a tad closer to being genuinely disabled ?, surely thats just self deception and getting close to the “fake it till you believe it” scenario. Or is it having other people think i’m disabled ? Personally I couldnt give a stuff what other people think of me, it is however important to me to know what and who i am.

So, pretending to be disabled whilst not being disabled simply does’nt bring any relief at all, it only heightens the frustration in me.

Yunno, if all i wanted from this was to live my life in a wheelchair then i’d do it, i’d go full time, with or without a disability and i’m sure i would find tremendous peace of mind from it, there’s nothing stopping me. But i’m not in it for the wheelchair, i’m in it for the experience of living life with a disability (and maybe a decent parking space !)

Incidently i did actually quantify my statements by saying they are how I cope with this thing and i did say it would probably be different for others.

Nowt to do with the topic, but it sounds like you need a bit of cheering up Sean (hope your not Irish ?)

Will

raven

You know, I’ve been hoping and waiting “a few more years” for 35 long bloody years. “It’s just around the corner”, well, the corner keeps on turning and I Don’t see it. Maybe there’s hope. But there’s a huge risk to end up having to endure another 35 years of this misery, and frankly, the prospect of *that* erases everything else.

Besides that, Neurostimulators are starting to push through, and it seems quite likely that within a few years we could have a very tweakable device which may well hold a key to happiness.

Option three is the most difficult, but it offers the most hope. There is the hope that someday things will get better. It’s a hope you can’t see now but just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. And you could miss out on the best part of the show if you leave early.

I know that back when I was where you were, if someone had said that to me, it wouldn’t have meant a thing. But that doesn’t mean it’s not true.

And I think you are underestimating the pain your loved ones would suffer. They would *not* get over it, ever. When someone you know kills themselves, you are forever marked by it. You can be distanced from it with time, but the wound never heals. The guilt, the “what ifs”…

When you’re depressed like this almost nothing matters but the pain you’re feeling inside. Not hope, not loved ones…perhaps only our animals because their loved and acceptance is so pure and simple and unconditional. Thank God for them.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told to ’snap out of it’. It is such a relief to me that I have in my possession enough tranquilizers to do the last and final job.

But again, I would leave my beloved cats. And although I have made provisions for them on my death, they still wouldn’t understand why they were being taken from the only home they’ve known and thrust into a cold, unknown world of noisiness and fear.

I can’t do that. And I could never bring myself to harm them the way demented parents kill their children, then kill themselves.

So here we are. And the suffering is very real. There are only brief respites and they are all too brief.