3 Truths and a Wedding

Well this weekend certainly has been just a big ole ball of ups and down now hasn't it? It's so funny because when I think about what I THOUGHT it was gonna look like, and what it turned into, reality is so vastly different from the truth.

Where to start? So. I met this guy the other day. I don't even know how to go into this because it's still really twisted and whatnot, but let's just suffice to say that we'd been talking for a few days and I was really liking the persona of the person and was looking forward to meeting him in person. I met him, and I was happy. He was pretty much what he seemed to be, although it's always weird. Whenever I'm dealing with people in the health industry (whether it's doctors, nurses, therapists, etc. and at this point I've dealt with all three AND EMS personnel) I always am on my guard because things always get weird around them. The doctor wanted to have bareback sex with a stack of condoms lying untouched nearby (didn't happen.) The nurse got all freaked out when he offered me a massage because my legs were smaller and less muscle-y (it's not a word, I KNOW) than he expected. But it's weird. People ask the stupidest questions sometimes. I remember one I got from a guy I was seeing for a few weeks, when he asked me one time when we were going to have sex,
"So like, why is your body all shaped that way?" well....let's see dumbass. You try crawling around for 20+ years and see what it does to your body. And it's not even out of choice. It's just a much easier way to get around because quite frankly, people's houses are usually not accessible, which would severely limit where I could go, and what I could do.

But anyway, I digress. I met the guy we had a good conversation that lasted some cray 8 hours. That's gotta be a good sign right? I thought so. Usually a good step. Means you enjoy the company of the people you're with and you don't think they're boring or embody the spirit of a tea candle. That being said, I knew something was up when I was texting playfully to make sure nothing happened and got the curt response, "I'm good. Going to bed. Nite." And this isn't the first time I get cut off, so I'm like whatever. The next day? Nothing. Which I knew in advance because of events that were planned but we'd usually spoken everyday for at least five seconds. Nothing. Nodda. So Sunday, I text. Nothing. I Facebook and practically get told off.

Now what's funny about this situation is that he has repeatedly told me that he refuses to date people below a certain age for whatever reason, and I kept thinking it had something to do with mentality or  the fact that they can't relate or whatever. I didn't even consider for a moment that some people apparently want someone who is at a certain status coming in from gate one. Now I'll be the first to admit that life certainly has not gone according to plan for me. Yes, I finished school got my degrees, and did everything I was supposed to do, but I ended up having to swim and keep my head above water for close to three years. Now that everything is falling into place, I can finally start slowly to rebuild my life the way I intend for it to be from now on. That doesn't mean I'm there. Nowhere close. I don't even have a fucking bedframe yet. I'm working on it, but no, I don't have one. Or a trashcan. My money goes where it's needed most. Rent. Utilities. Groceries. In that order. I think that he may have thought I was something else when he came over.

Which leads to me to the first truth. Did I fuck up? Yes. I got way too comfortable with a total stranger when i shouldn't have, and it may have cost me. He's a fun guy, but clearly he had ideas about what needed to be going on beforehand and when they didn't met his expectations, he started questioning them. I don't know if I'm going to hear from him again or not, but if I spend more time thinking about it, I'll get mad at myself again and I don't wanna do that.

The second truth: I should have prioritized and bought a fucking heater. That WILL be purchase numero UNO. I forgot what November in DC is really like.

and the third truth: I went to a wedding tonight. The highly anticipated union of John Fazakerly and John Jowers, which I guess means there's a hyphen in there somewhere now, haha. It was really really nice. Of course, when John F is coordinating, something tells me he was BRIDEZILLA for sure, but it turns out really great. The ceremony was really touching, and it got me to thinking about what may or may not be for me one day. Do I ever see myself down an aisle? Yes. Soon? At this rate, nope. I'll be married one time and that's it. But I did realize something. I really have gotten to the point where I don't like crowds. I really don't. I'm not a fan of loud music, or a lot of bodies in a small space. In the past, it really didn't bother me, and I could just roll around and make small talk with whomever. Granted, this was back in college, and I knew a lot of the people there, and could find a reason to talk with them. These days? I don't have anything to talk about with strangers. It just feels awkward and forced. Which makes me feel awkward, and I'm not used to feeling that way. I don't really like it, but I much prefer quiet and intimate social gatherings with less than 10 people. Granted, this month is really not the time to be griping about it, as I have no less than THREE Thanksgivings to attend, but still.

Well onto tomorrow, the last day of my very long extended vacation. What will I do to celebrate? Probably get as much sleep as humanly possible. I know I'm going to miss that part. Oh, and ARTPOP came out. 8.5/10. I'm in love with the first half of the CD, the second half will have to grow on me. But I love Gaga for being Gaga. She gives me everything.

(Taps Fork on Glass) *Dingdingdingding!* Attention Ladies and Gentlemen....The Struggle is Officially OVER!

Well if you want to be technical about it, the struggle never OFFICIALLY stops. It won't stop until I'm buried dead in the ground, and even then whoever I leave behind will still be struggling in some sense of the word. But at least, in this instance, for me, there has been a catacysmic shift in karma and LORD am I ever thankful for it.

I. Got. A. Job. And not just any job, oh no. Not a, sitting at home making $9.50 an hour answering the telephone because I'm actually on my computer looking through job opportunities and this is how I pay my rent, type of job, but an actual career. It's so weird. I will be able to go into parties, and meet random strangers on the street and sip wine in a bar making casual conversation with random passersby when they ask that horribly ubitiquious question that DC'ers are oh so famous for: "So WHAT do you do?" not, "HOW do you do," because quite frankly they could give a flying fuck on how you feel, (and that's just the God's honest truth in this ridiculously polarized city) but just because they're more interested in where you are on the corporate ladder. A part of me always wonders whether or not people ask that question because they're secretly interested in trying to figure out if they can somehow use you to go higher on their particular totem pole of life, thereby using you as a footstool as they move up, but I know that's horribly cynical and I really would rather not think like that. But it would be remiss of me not to at least mention it. Cause, you know, the thought is there.

Anyway, I digress! After my last post, where I might or might not have mentioned the fact that I had just a had job interview for this position, it was a whirlwind two months of back and forths, and unlimited waiting as the old person left and the new person came in and I was in for yet more interviews and writing samples and background investigations and the whole nine, but at the end of ALL of it, Ruben Gonzales, the head of the Development Department at the National Office of United Cerebral Palsy offered me the position of Manger of Institutional Giving with a really nice starting salary, and of course, I accepted. So now there it is. I can be a productive member of American society once again, no longer a Welfare Queen making Marco Rubio's life so much easier by labeling myself as one of his infinite statistics.

That being said, everything is going to change. I'm glad I got a chance to watch the entire series of Ugly Betty because I feel like that is what I'm going to channel in this new position. Granted while I am NOTHING like her, I admire the fact that she was willing to do any and everything for her position and people in power recognized that, though it didn't come immediately. It took her four years but she ended up in amazing places doing amazing things and I think that's wonderful. So I think I will channel that. But I will also channel Olivia Pope because well....she's Olivia Pope and she handles everything. No matter how crucial or ridiculous, it gets handled. And that's....awesome.

                              += EPIC

On a different note, last night I watched this movie on Netflix called "Morgan." I don't really know why I was watching it to begin with. I saw what it was about which was a gay athlete who becomes paraplegic after a biking accident who's trying to find acceptance in his new body. I clicked it thinking I could get some tips on how to deal with the gay community and the whole ableism thing but it just ended up being a colossal waste of time. Why? The FIRST person he sees while on his way to get drunk in sorrow was some guy on a basketball court who proceeds to randomly ask him out and become the love of his life. GIVE. ME. A. FUCKING. BREAK. Is real life like that? Is it really? Cause if so, I swear I must live in an alternate Silent Hill universe where people are overly rude and insensitive, where you have to go to other countries to find some real sort of affection because the people here think you're just sucking up their healthcare and their pity.

I wish I weren't so cynical. But life makes you grow some kind of skin, or else you kill yourself. That's about all there is to it.

Rating: 3/10 Over it. 

But Why You Wouldn't To?

This was the question I kept being asked today by a family member as we sat outside her front porch just talking. Let me start by saying that for those of you who don't know this already, my family is rather religious. My grandfather is a pastor and for many years ran a small church in the backwoods of Georgia, along with my grandmother who was the Church Mother. They in turn, kept telling my father that the calling of the Lord was on his life to be a pastor, and like Jonah, he fled all the way to the other side of life just trying to find a way to live his own life.

I find this incredibly ironic, considering how hellbent they've been in trying to ensure that I lead a life that is rather close to the one that they've decided for me, but hey, they're parents so what can you do? All of that is irrelvent to my point in this particular blog. I bring that up because our conversation started out rather innocently enough. We were talking about my upbringing and how nice it was that being black and growing up in nice white neighborhoods, I got exposed to a lot more things than many people in my same situation. But then, we started talking about my disability, and others might see us with it.

I was once told, that my disability has essentially shaped my family and that by my having it, it has changed the way that everyone in my family operates. In one such opinion, my Cerebral Palsy was responsible for the fact that my brother has grown to be really introverted. Apparently as the bigger brother, it was MY responsibility to teach him things like baseball, football, flirting with girls and how to drive a car, none of which I currently do.

That was how things started.

Then the conversation turned to how perhaps all of these things could've changed if perhaps I didn't have a disability, or more aptly, how if when I was growing up, if I had worked harder to become like a normal person (her words) then I could've done those things after all. And NOW we get to where things started to get heated.

Let me take a minute and say that when I was growing up, my parents used to take me to Shriner's Hospital a lot, and during those visits, the doctors repeated over and over (and I heard more times than I care to admit) that medicine could only do so much. That it was MY responsibility to do the excersizing and to endure the pain of physical therapy and so on and forth. That I had to WANT to walk like everyone else. But even as she was talking, something hit me. Why was she so fascinated on why I wanted to be like everyone else? As a person with Cerebral Palsy, what if I had instead, wanted to embrace the ideal that I was a person with a disability? Couldn't I have gotten therapy for THAT instead? And it came to that all-defining moment in which the title of this blog is, when she asked me: But why? Why Wouldn't You Want To Walk?

And this is the problem. Her question echoes the fundamental problem with society today. As she sat there looking at me with an absolutely puzzled expression on her face, I countered back, "What's wrong with being me? Being a person with a disability?" To which she responded, "But who would WANT to have a disability? I wouldn't want my child to have a disability." Now I'm not going to sit here and sat that I would want my child to be born with disability, but the way in which the answer was framed was put in such a way that would signify that to have a child with a disability, was to have something that was broken, or incomplete, or marred in such, that it was beyond the reach of living a normal life.

I stress that my family member did not mean anything by her responses. They were simply questions she uttered in the moment, and I realized that she is simply repeating what she hears from everyone else. In America, I think we need to have another conversation about disability. Not with doctors and insurance companies and therapists about how to fix a person's life, but rather we need to have a conversation with the PERSON to decide what it is they want to do.

It's a lot like when I was performing with the gay men's chorus that I sing with in D.C. in June. The artistic director refused to let me lay on the stage with everyone else (who was on the floor) because he felt, that by leaving me in my wheelchair, that he was in fact, "doing me a favor." I feel like this is essentially the attitude that the medical profession has when assessing someone's condition when it comes to them having a disability (and I mean this strictly in terms of the disability. If a person is born with a congenital heart defect, then OBVIOUSLY that person needs medical intervention.)

But I told her that if I were a parent, and my child had a disability, depending on the severity and the type of disability, when my child reached a certain age, rather than force various types of therapies, drugs and equipment on them, I'd prefer to have a candid conversation about the nature of the disability and their life. What did THEY want? What would I have to do as a parent to ensure that they had the life fulfilling to THEM? I just feel that people should be asking about how they can help a person feel their best, instead of how they be the perceived version of NORMAL.