I have a job on most Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays as a caretaker of a 15-year-old girl with Autism. I also babysit, used to volunteer at Wellspring, take four classes, and sleep every couple of nights. I also have Cerebral Palsy. The other night I got an Uber ride back from the girl’s house after her father comes home, and the Uber driver made comments like, “You have CP, I can tell,” and “You get around good.” Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. I am often hung up on the phone (and one time someone told me to call back when I was easier to understand), and I have been told more than once that the doctors can cure me, despite me informing the people that once a brain is damaged like mine (i.e. Cerebral Palsy), brain matter can not just “fill in the blanks.” I am perceived to have no agency, and that I just let things happen to me.
Then, every now and then, when I decide to not just lie in bed and think about how disabled I am, I do things that make me “inspirational.” There is this comedian named Josh Blue who jokes that when you call someone with a disability “inspirational,” what you are really saying is, “if I were you I would have killed myself.” It is one thing to find a person with a disability inspirational for doing something, but the fact that I wake up in the morning is not inspirational. Yes, all my friends have heard this argument many times.
One of the main issues with this idea that I am inspirational just adds to the idea that people with disabilities are incapable of doing things everyone else does, and the fact that one is is not an anomaly. The fact that I go to school and have friends, just like every other person in college should not inspire you. My whole family went to college, are they inspirational too?
Someone the other day described me as having a “frail body” that could be hurt at any moment. It is ironic that I am this helpless being, and yet a great inspiration to all. I really do not understand this notion that I have no agency, and it bothers me so much. My parents always tell this joke that when you have a child, all you want is for them to walk and talk, and then when they do you tell them to “sit down and shut up.” Sure it took me a little longer, but I still got there.
I know what you are thinking, those people are just ignorant, do not listen to them; but it is constantly coming up in my life. Whether it is my uber driver, my professors, my friends, there is this notion that I do a lot more than a disabled person should. I got my first surgery when I was eight years old, and people told me that I was amazing for being so strong. My options were that surgery, or double hip replacements by age 15. My friends also make these grand assumptions based on my abilities and limitations, which, to be clear, although frustrating, do not make people bad people.
People always ask me what the hardest thing about having a disability, and my response is the perceived lack of agency. You should not assume people can or cannot do something because of an identity they had. I have a physical disability, but I am also as capable as other 20-year-old college students (as capable as they may be). You should assume people can do more than you think they can, because most people underestimate others.