The Wheelchair Was Not the End of Me

When I started using a wheelchair full time, the hardest part was not the practical adjustment. The hardest part was other people’s faces.

The particular expression that crossed people’s faces when they saw me, a combination of pity and discomfort, was something I had to learn to move through without letting it settle on me. Some days I managed. Some days I did not.

What changed my relationship to it was a Saturday morning about three months in. I was at a market and I was navigating my way through the stalls and I just stopped thinking about the chair. I was thinking about whether the tomatoes looked good and whether I wanted coffee and whether I needed to get back before noon. Ordinary things. And somewhere in that ordinariness, something shifted.

The wheelchair did not stop me from being a person with a life. It changed how I move through the world. That is a real difference and I do not want to minimize it. But it is not the same as ending.

I am still working out some things. There are places I cannot access that I used to not think about. There are days my body frustrates me. There are conversations I have to have that I would rather not. But I am also still here, still going to markets on Saturday mornings, still thinking about whether the tomatoes look good.

That has to count for something.