Never Walked In High Heels

When our eighth grade teacher assigned us to create a family tree, mine was the size of four large poster boards taped together. We were to find the names, dates of birth and deaths going back three generations before ourselves. Mr. Bowman, our teacher said that if we knew our parents names, birthdays, etc and our grandparents should be able to do the same. The assignment sheet ended with the statement “just go as far back in your family tree as you can.”

Thanks to some very adventurous relatives, my drive to be class valedictorian, and a father who harbors some not so secret passions for family research, my family tree went  back sixteen generations and included soldiers enlisted in every war between the American Revolution and the Second World War. Mine, I have often been told, is a family tree peppered with people who sought out lives full of adventure and opportunities. Over and over these quests led them back to America and back to defend the country that was, for them, the land of opportunity.

Not long ago I was reminded of this as my plans for the future were mentioned, plans that didn’t include going back to the United States any time soon.

“How can you think of doing that? Don’t you realize how much your fore fathers gave up  just so you could have the advantages of being an American,” I often feel as though wanting to live somewhere else puts me on par with Benedict Arnold as people whom I normally consider to be very open minded suddenly start going on about how enlisting in the US army should be required for all citizens and how freedom is never free.

I know freedom isn’t free and opportunity doesn’t come cheaply. I am an actress with a disability and I have chosen to immigrate half way around the planet to have a shot at chasing my dreams.

Within the past year alone, I’ve worked with two different television networks,  contracted my play to premier in central London, and worked with a major casting director. And while all these opportunities are available in the United States, my disability is seen as an even bigger hindrance to my artistic career there than it is here. If I was born to be an artist, the land of opportunity is where I can achieve the dreams and ambitions I have set for myself to achieve.

Because my ancestors crossed the ocean in the 1600′s, one can hardly argue that they “came to America, the land of opportunity.” The country that we now call the United States didn’t exist when they boarded a ship headed for a place which, at that time, only existed in rumors and letters. The act of immigrating to America, rebelling against the king of England, and defending the territory against the red coats, was not so much an act of sacrifice as it was an act of risk. Nobody, even as recently as one hundred years ago, knew what America would become. No one in my family came to America because it had been branded “the land of dreams.” People who came much later, no doubt came as a result of such titles. My ancestors came because risking everything to get to a place which might lead them to a life closer to the one they dreamed of outweighed the risk of not doing so.

Am I rebelling against my forefathers if I decide to pick up and live my life in the land of Mad King George and the rest? Hardly. They picked up their families and moved to follow what their dreams dared them to do. No doubt the family members they left behind mentioned sacrifices their ancestors made in attempts to keep order and stability in the family. But dreams hardly ever take much notice of man made constructs, even ones as seemingly grand as nationalities and traditions.

After all, if my ancestors were willing to pack up and leave everything they knew to even attempt to have a life they dreamed of, am I actually rebelling if I am willing to do likewise?

“You are a very very brave young woman,” she said turning towards me and placing one hand on her walker for stability. We were on a pedestrian island in the middle of Trafalgar Square, making it halfway across the street before the light changed color. For me it was because I had arrived at the crosswalk towards the end of the green cycle that I had gotten only partway across the street. I had seen this woman edging across long before I myself had reached the crosswalk and, due to her age and gait, only had made it this far.

“Not as brave as you,” I replied, smiling at her gumption. If there is one intersections which distresses me above any of the others in London it is Trafalgar Square. Here, cars guide their way through a maze which resembles a bowl of spaghetti more than an intersection. For every crosswalk there is at least one pedestrian island which warns you that crossing in one go may be difficult for some. Indeed, the lights a choreographed in such a way that it almost takes a study in geometric principles to work out how the lights can be timed in your favor. And, to top it all off, being one of the most famous and photographed squares in the world means that when you are there, you feel like one is at the centre of the universe and everyone in all galaxies both known and unknown is watching you attempt to cross from one end of the square to the other in some sort of existential trek, metaphorically symbolizing the frailty of human efforts in the attempt to strive for meaning.

Or a least that’s my perception. My friends think I’m nuts and offer the advice “when you see the green guy go, when you see the red guy stop.” Thanks.

Suffice it to say, I wouldn’t let my grandmother cross Trafalgar Square alone. And the idea of anyone else over the age of seventy five doing so made me very nervous. I edged forward to offer assistance. Maybe she could hold on to the back of my chair to gain support to cross the street. Even when one is dependent on everyone else, it is still impossible to squash the reflex to help someone else in need when you see it.

“In my day, young women like you barely even left the four walls of their home unless they were heading for a shelter during an evacuation. Good for you.” I froze.

In London, it is impossible for me to look into the face of an older person without wondering if they had been around during World War II. Unlike the majority of working age Londoners, those from the generation who survived the Blitz still look you in the eye. And every once in a while, I catch a fierce gleam inside of the person, without exchanging any dialogue which says “I have seen parts of this city reduced to rubble. I have seen it built back up again. I know that life is filled with both pain and joy.”

This was a woman who had survived much in London, her eyes asserted it. Which is why I was shocked that she would ever call me ‘brave.’ A person who had watched her country be attack by enemy fire when victory wasn’t certain surely cannot begin to find courage in a young woman crossing the street on a sunny day, holding a patent leather bag with one hand and getting ready to dial her iphone with the other.

When local heroes are interviewed we hear them say over and over “I was just doing what anyone else would’ve done in my position.” And perhaps heroism, at it’s root is not about what you do when the stakes are high, but rather what you do when there isn’t much of a choice. Live or die. Fight or roll over. Go out or be a shut in. Cross the street or stay stagnant. In extreme situations, there really are just two options. And more often than not “heroes” are the ones who choose the more desirable option rather than facing destruction.

If two women on opposite ends of the age spectrum can meet at a crosswalk and admire the drive for life in the other, then the best things in this world are both inexplicable and universal. I don’t feel particularly brave just because I choose to cross the street, even in Trafalgar Square. In my mind it’s what everyone does, so I do it too. And maybe those who saw bombs falling on London, who waited it St. Paul’s Cathedral with buckets of water to put out fires, and who rebuilt their lives choosing to keep pushing hope, did so because there was little other option. At our core, we want to keep straining away for more life.

The light turned green in Trafalgar Square, and everyone around us started crossing the street, making it natural for her and I to do likewise. We were on our separate ways again.

Most creative people will often say that they want to give up their profession for something more sensible. All armature dramatics aside, I often find myself debating on whether my career as an actress and writer will ever really be worthwhile. This is especially the case if you know you can do something with your life—anything in fact—you set your mind to. At my age, I am still young enough to go to law school or do a plethora of other things if I set my mind to them. I am often reminded that God tells us to wait and to trust him, which is a combination that contains two of the hardest things for me to do in my life. The combination is excruciating, and it seems that if I took things into my own control, everything would and should happen much faster.

Last week I found myself having such a day. With the assortment of facebook, twitter, and other necessities of the modern age, I am able to share in my friends milestones and see the lovely pictures that show up as a result—the weddings, the births, the job promotions—none of which have shown up in my life as of yet, and in many ways, I feel that my road stretches on and on before me without a single bend in it or any sign to act as a marker for how far I’ve come or how far I have yet to go. Still waiting for so much that I want to accomplish, often overshadows the massive amount that I already have.

When you first meet Jeremy you aren’t quite sure if he is an actual person or a character attempting to be a human being. He was a guest teacher in one of my acting classes last week—he creates the figure of a sort of man-clown, who dresses in a green hat and vest with a suit coat and a handkerchief. The sort of outfits that people used to wear all the time, but now when the entire ensemble is put together, looks vaguely comical. He goes about the country teaching that to create anything one must be willing to take risks. The risk of failure and then come to the realization that there is security in failing, especially when one hits rock bottom—for then there is then no where else to go, which can be any more diminutive and where the ground offers no padding but plenty of support. After a brief lecture, he took off his hat which in the style of David Larible, seemed to have a mind and style of a movie all its own. His hat came alive rolling across his shoulder, beckoning from the floor to pay attention to him, and finally in a brief moment of risk itself through it into us the class and challenged us to make it land on his single finger as he stood on a chair. I was not amused and for that matter neither was the rest of the class walking around the room which seems to be a favored activity among any and all acting teachers, was something that I found exhausting on that particular day. I didn’t want to train anymore perhaps if I did train to be an actor nothing would become of it. So, while the rest of the class attempted in vain to land the mysterious and seemingly rebellious hat on Jeremy’s finger I meandered around—not wanting to perform in the least. He rest of the class soon got fed up with the game and began tossing the hat back and forth to each other as much as attempting to take aim at the target.

Perhaps now is an appropriate time to say that I can’t throw anything. My aim is terrible and more often then not I am unable to let go of the object that I’m attempting to toss, so it falls to the floor. Even my dog knows this fact and when we attempt to play fetch together, he picks up the ball and throws it himself after my vain attempt to create some distance from the object has failed. Then after throwing it himself, he retrieves the ball and hands it over to me so that I may have another try. When I used to play competitive basketball, I was known as a “defensive player.” If ever I was in possession of the ball, one could be assured that something was completely wrong.

As the girls tossed the hat back and forth, I found not a familiar face in the entire class this being are very first time of meeting together. Whenever I am in the company of strangers I feel, compelled to justify my existence—to illustrate that I am every bit as capable in achieving my goals and keeping up with the best of them—but the need to justify oneself never leads to creativity. One of these strange and unknown students eventually tossed the hat to me and I quickly began to belittle myself. How nice I thought to myself, they wanted to attempt to include the crippled girl. I knew that attempting to land the hat on my teacher’s finger was completely out of the question, and so without thinking, I simply tossed it aside.

As I watched to see just how measly my throw had been, I saw the hat land squarely on the target.

By the time I got home that evening the shock of it still had not managed to wear off. It was an unbelievable and in many was inexplicable experience. Despite all this, it offered me encouragement. As cliché as this perhaps is to say, it is often when we take one small step backwards from our dreams to truly examine what we want and how far we are willing to go for it—one step away to attempt to gain some distance and perspective—it is then that we are able to perform are best. It is in taking this step in the seemingly wrong direction that we release ourselves from trying to justify ourselves and set free the creative forces, which are ultimately uncontrollable.

On that particular day, reaching my target in the little sense allowed me to reach for my dreams in the metaphorical sense. After all, the hat with my deficiency in aim and leverage could have landed anywhere in the room, and even though I was not thinking of it, it dropped off exactly where it needed to be.

Last summer I saw two of my friends get married. In many ways it seemed as though they were already wedded long before they walked down the aisle and said their vows to each other. The second they went on their first date here in London it seemed that they were perfect for each other.

The woman was a friend of mine previously to the couple coming together. One afternoon she came into my flat insisting that over Valentine’s Day weekend, she would make haggis as a sort of rebellion against the overly commercial, sappy, syrupy, sociological dedication towards Valentine’s day. What could be a better rebellion than stuffing a sheep’s intestine full of herbs and spices while listening to punk music then tucking in to enjoy the hard work? So she did what any single, self respecting woman would do to prepare for Valentine’s day, she went to Borough Market and bought a sheep’s gut from the butcher’s. While there she bumped into a young man queuing up for the same ingredients. His version of the perfect Valentine’s day weekend was exactly the same as hers. Three years later they were walking down the aisle.

We were in a world which teaches that people are not fully complete until they have found a mate. This is not only a teaching of all the major religions, but also that of the mass media. Nearly every song one hears on the radio is about love. Every television show goes round and round about romantic interests, breakups, and the inevitable make up sex; as well as the news stories are filled with weddings and gossip about divorces. Romance, we are told, is one thing that everyone always ought to be looking for.

The idea of being a complete person and alone is almost unheard of. Churches and synagogues are full of singles groups where you can meet like-minded individuals of the opposite sex. Even in the modern world where marriage is not necessarily encouraged, it is difficult to be seen as a whole person. Everyone, at the very least, lives together as a couple.

What’s so amazing about my friend’s story is in many ways cliché. Over and over you hear, “It’s when you aren’t looking that you find someone,” and then we try to convince ourselves when we find someone that we are attracted to that we weren’t looking for anyone in the first place. I highly doubt that either of my friends were looking for their future mates when standing in line at a butcher shop, holding a sheep’s intestine. In many ways, that’s what makes their story so special. The fact that both of them, as individuals, were able to stand up to the and insist that a day which everyone else swears up and down was meant for love was actually meant for stuffing a sheep’s stomach and listening to of punk rock. There are two people completely content and confident with how they see themselves as well as refusing to cave in to the expectations of those around them hunting for happiness in another person simply because they are still single.

What makes an individual complete or a full entity is how satisfied they are with themselves, not how they are seen in the eyes of other people. If someone is without a partner, he must believe that he is still complete, not lacking in anybody’s expectation simply because there is no wife to show for it. Anyone who swears otherwise can, well, stuff it as they would a sheep’s gut. 

What I Know Of Her Son

She is a woman who I have been wanting to meet for years. Ever since I first heard my friend describe his mother, I knew that she was amazing just by examining his outlook, and that she had a degenerative nerve disease. When he spoke of his mother, he keeps the latter fact quiet and simple telling me of what she’d done and what she used to tell him. “She’s fine…well she’s not fine she has a nerve disease. But it really doesn’t affect her that much.” And so, when I finally bumped into her visiting her son while walking down the road at a Sunday pace, I was surprised as she was further along in her condition that he had made it out to sound. As close as we were I wish he would have told me honestly what her status was like and what her troubles were. But maybe he is as blind to her disability as he is to mine.

I always wanted to meet his mother. It amazes me whenever I meet the parents of any of my friends. I begin to understand where they got their values and which matters were the greatest influences on their life. This particular woman raised my friend incredibly well. For my own sake, when I am out and dependent on him it is as close as I can possibly imagine to possibly being fully independent. In such cases I am particularly interested in meeting the mother of the family, mothers teach their children to stretch their boundaries and to think beyond what is normal in order to incorporate people of all types. The influence of such a woman can mean that for the rest of their life, their child does not feel awkward whenever meeting someone strange. Mothers open up the world of acceptability to their children, making the entire universe more inclusive. I have met two of this woman’s sons and I can safely say that she did a wonderful job in raising her children to be as accommodating and as understanding as human beings can possibly be.

As soon as we were introduced, her eyes lit up with a flicker of recognition. She was holding on to her walker and instantly called me by name. From this I gathered that she somehow knew my name and that it was familiar in their home. Watching her watch her son handle my bags and meet my needs for minor assistance, it suddenly dawned on me that this behavior that she was witnessing in the young man that she helped raise, nurse, feed and carry was new to her. She probably never saw anyone rely on him in such a dependent way as I do on a regular basis. The fact is, I depend on all of my friends, but particularly him, and I forget that this often looks strange to the outside world.

Then, almost instantly, I came to another realization, that because of her own disability, someday soon she will be dependent on him as well. For many individuals with a long term degenerative illness this impending dependency is the most fearful thing to overcome. The fact that someday you will be dependent on your children, and at that point in time it is how you raised them that will reflect on how they will take care of you. Again, it is the classical instance of an individual reaping what they sow. As parents teach their children to care for human life and value it in all its forms, the trickle down effect is that eventually they will be under the care of their children in one form or another. Those families who do not bother to teach their children such values and ethics will no doubt feel it when the older generation inevitably starts losing its own independence.

For me the most humbling realization was that suddenly I knew something about her children, particularly her sons, that she knew nothing of, that she would someday be reliant upon. In this small way, I know how her sons look out for people in need, protecting and advocating for them. Both in the slightest and most dramatic ways. They are both unafraid to feed someone when a spoon becomes too difficult to hold onto. They can tie shoes without breaking the conversation and are experts at making sure that someone not only survives, but that they are happy, healthy and know that they are valued. If such a day comes for her when she can no longer perform the tasks of daily living without a great deal of assistance, she will also find that her boys are exactly as she raised them and I am already thankful for those effects.

Somedays I wish I could tell her now that her children will take care of her when she is in need. I wish I could tell her that when her body rebels and she is no longer able to do what was once considered a natural reflex without a massive amount of frustration, she will have no need to worry. I wish I could tell her all the ways that I see my friend stepping up to the plate and preparing himself to take care of his parents when they grow older. I wish I could tell her all the stories of all the times he advocates for me, and that I am grateful to have such a fabulous friend.

And then I can’t help but wonder, if she and her husband raised their children to become such honorable and humane people, perhaps she knew what he is capable of all along.

When I woke up in the North Carolina humidity, the only thing more confused than my brain was, of course, my body. The cool shadows of the afternoon did nothing to stop the fact that I was sticking to the sheets, or that I was suffering from severe jet lag as I had just flown back to the States for a week to visit friends. It was two in the morning for me and my friend had just shaken me awake and murmured something about dinner. I placed my unsteady feet on the floor and made my way into the next room in hopes of getting my bearings a bit better. There, on the wall, was a map of the world and my eye flicked straight to where I had just come from: London, UK.

In that second I knew something in my life had changed.

Ever since I could remember, whenever I saw a map my mind would automatically look for Chicago, Illinois. This was where I spent the first twenty some odd years of my life calling ‘home.’ This could very well be attributed to the fact that Chicago has Lake Michigan acting as a large blue finger pointing to it for the rest of the world to notice. When I had completed college, spending all four years in the state of North Carolina, my eye would still jump to Chicago every time I looked at a map. I simply assumed, like so many other habits acquired in childhood, seeing Chicago first would be something I always did.

I stared at my friend’s map for quite some time attempting to almost drag my focus back to where it normally settles. Focusing my gaze there just felt uncomfortable and like a magnet I kept being drug across the ocean back to London. I went to help my friends cook dinner.

“Hey, when you guys look at a map, where is the first place you look?”

“Russia,” one friend said without thinking.

“Chechnya” blurted out another.

“Medellin, Colombia,” spilled from a third.

All of these places, random as they seem on paper, were not just places they had been to. Over the past seven years I had known them to go everywhere for months at a time as all three of them were desirous to pursue human aide as their professions. Rather, the specific places they mentioned were the areas they determined as where they wanted to serve for the rest of their lives. Here was where they had written me letters saying that they had fallen in love with the people who occupied the area. Here were the places that, when mentioned on the news, caused their hearts to skip a beat and then cry out in anguish. The places they named without stopping for a moment to think, were where they hoped to raise their families, live their lives, and invest in their professions…because they already knew that place would be home.

It was then it dawned on me for the first time, that England had somehow become my home.

I went back to the cool dark room which held the map after supper to rummage through my bags and find some toiletries. My eyes kept floating back up and finding the outline of England. I tried to think of possible explanations for this phenomenon but could find none. I hadn’t spent the last years looking at maps trying to figure out where I was as I did growing up. Outside of coming to America, I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen a world map. I had spent the same amount of time away at university as I had in the UK and my eyes never searched for North Carolina. There was no habit I could think of to justify the new reflex.

By weeks end I was still searching out England before anything else. My best friend took me to the airport and although I was sorry to leave her, I couldn’t help but talk about the plans I had for the upcoming weekend in London. I didn’t want to stay with her, I wanted my friend to come with me. The flight attendant came to help me board the plane as I gave my friend a last hug. Although I looked back after being taken from her, I smiled, thinking about all the people and wonderful things that were waiting for me when I got off the plane. These details were what made the little island mine.

“Are you heading home now,” the flight attendant asked me while supporting my arm and helping me walk to my seat.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I am.”

I’ve heard that everyone else knows this fact, however it was indeed news to me. Winston Churchill managed to lose every public election he ever ran in, ultimately of course he grew to be one of the greatest leaders of the UK in all of history. We hear stories of such great people failing over and over, falling flat on their face and at one time or another an object as simple as the lightbulb would never have come into reality, we sit in awe dumbfounded, and to be fair, never actually believing that such great men would be capable of such great and consistent failures. In our heart of hearts many of us say, “After a while of not getting what I was reaching for, I myself would give up.” This is a statement that I hear over and over as I pass over rejection slips in the mail or don’t get a callback that I feel I particularly deserved. The truth is, I can’t give up my dreams, nobody can. Such stories of great men refusing to give up on their’s only supports the drive. If I gave up I would always wonder, what if?

Often we forget the value of preparing, a willingness to be sharpened as tools, ready when we are called upon, for insisting on being prepared for when that day comes. Many years of work, when thankless and filled with little to no success, we forget that in our world that is driven purely on the basis of results and end gains, its that the preparation in many ways is more important than the achievement itself. The act of sharpening a knife over and over again, even when there are weeks or years when its use is not necessary insures that in the end our efforts will not be laid to waste, and in many ways, that preparation will prove more important than our willingness to cut.

Over and over I’ve heard within acting classes as well as when working on my own writing at home that creating works is a ratio of 10% inspiration and 90% luck. The timing of getting ready equals always sharpening those pencils and creating work that may or may not be called upon. So that when your day comes, you are the best tool possible in an industry that has a distinctive need. People tell me over and over that there will never be a use for an actor with a disability, but they forget that the world said the same thing about airplanes, actors of different races, female writers, about a million unforeseen occurrences, which ultimately had to have happened in order for progress not only to be made but also measurable. New needs arise when we are in desperate times or even when we are simply challenged by those days that are going well. Often times it takes years of failures for a person to be able to fulfill that new need exactly when it is needed. More importantly, it indeed takes decades of failures to be able to stand down an abysmal situation, such as a country at war or the night taking over one’s life, and therein refuse to back down from the challenge that seemed self-evident.

I think of these things often as I walk to various classes wondering if my investments in training and education will ever reap a dividend and even, quite possibly mean a profit, I work in an industry that in many ways doesn’t want change. Doesn’t want people to rock the boat, but in many ways this is of course, every industry. Arts and entertainment is no different in seeking stability than banking and law practice. Maybe the day when my vision of the world will be fulfilled will not come in my lifetime, but I know that the best things in the world are built on the backs of people failing and discovering that even amongst these failures there is a grit and determination that is more helpful than such minor successes along the way. The world was made better by those insisting that failure did not necessarily mean game over. These are the men I think of on my way to class day in and day out. I am reminded of them as I prepare for more exercises and move to face the new day, or as Abraham Lincoln (another man to never win a public election) said, “I will prepare, and someday my chance will come.”

It is a typical question my parents ask of me at about this time. The family letters go out mostly to people I have never met although heard about in stories from their time in grad school or law school, and in return we get pictures of new babies and blushing brides. It is without a doubt the Christmas card season, which in recent years has mostly been re-dubbed the Christmas letter season. The time of year where you attempt, usually in vain, trying to figure out the mail merge function on Microsoft word just to add a personal touch to a general form letter, thus making it look like you wrote the letter for a specific recipient all along. For the sake of our letter, if anything, I have been working on “This School Year,” I hadn’t thought of my life in terms of school years and grading terms for ages, thus reminding me how little structure and accountability I have in my life as it currently stands. And to be honest, I couldn’t think of a way to sum up my entire existence in one simple line. What was I working on? Part of me didn’t even know.

All of a sudden I feel an enormous rush to justify my self-existence. I want to find a masters program to enroll in, some sort of regime that I cant point to and say “See that? This year I am doing that.” But that is the nature of having a creative life. My life doesn’t fit into scheduled time tables. Some of my most important work happens between the hours of 9 o’clock and 12 o’clock at night. A friend once told me that being an artist is as much a life style choice as it is vocational decision.

He explained that his 30th birthday was spent cleaning toilets and living on the dole and that two years previous, when he was twenty-eight, his birthday was spent sipping champagne and eating strawberries. Being an artist means that you can fall down the ladder as quickly as you can climb up it. The structure and security is completely gone.

I’m sure, regardless of whatever my parents write, many of those who read the Christmas letter will think that I somehow managed to fail them. Growing up I was your typical success story: straight A student, never veering off course, the front row adolescent who’s mind was full of questions and never entertained rebellion. They used to tell my parents, “She’s going places. She’ll be great at whatever she does. I can’t wait to see her in the future.” And right now at least, all I’m great at is provoking a lot of instability in my own life.

By nature of my condition, much of my life has been spent with a sort of warped view of time.  When you are disabled, time slows down and success is largely relative for a kid who was never meant to live much further than her first evening. This means that growing up, taking your first steps at age ten, waiting until fifteen to attempt to ride a bike, still being unable to tie one’s own shoes, and even today, I must find great significance in even the smallest victories. As I wait, often overwhelmed by rejection and closed doors, I am forced to answer myself with regards to whom I’m writing and performing for. When I discover the answer, even the rehearsed readings and showings that occur inside an acting classroom become as important as any opening night on a West End stage.

My life, scattered as it is, has become impossible to sum up in a single letter, much less in a single sentence contained in a letter. I figured this out for myself my first year out of college when I attempted to write my own Christmas letters from the UK. All I could do was write each one out by hand and fill it with questions about the life of the recipient. This took pages and failed to pinpoint exactly what in my life I was accomplishing.

People who only know me by Christmas letters can’t really begin to understand what I am up to, so even a ten page letter I think, would illustrate that really I don’t know what I’m up to and perhaps my incompetency at running my own life would only be barely shown within a ream of paper. Nonetheless my parents pressured me to come up with anything to explain to relatives.  It’s not that my parents don’t love me or they don’t understand, its that they are at a loss to explain what’s going on. Sometimes I tease them, “Tell them that I am one of those people who change the digital clocks on banks every year during daylight savings time. That will illustrate some sort of stable success.” People remain unamused by this answer, looking for a simple one line statement of what I’m up to.

Most of all, I wish my parents just to tell their friends that I am well. Because I am well.

A few weeks ago I witnessed my friend marry I guy I don’t particularly like. It’s not that he’s a bad person, but there are several red flags in their relationship already which make me very uncomfortable and I recognize these signs by failures in my own rocky friendships. It’s one of those situations where someone is so passive aggressive that it is hard to point to anything they are doing particularly wrong, but nonetheless  there are always stressful situations being handled very poorly.

When I last saw her before the wedding I tried everything I could possibly think of to understand what exactly she saw in this young man, and as a hidden agenda, I tried everything possible to dissuade her from marriage without saying outrightly “I don’t like the guy.” I was always hoping that by my questions, she would begin to question herself.  But the answers she gave me also satisfied her and so I returned home feeling frustrated that she was so convinced she was right.

I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m at an age where I have started to see my friends make mistakes. Huge mistakes. And I’m also at a point in my life where I am, perhaps for the first time, old enough to realize there is nothing I can do about those mistakes that they so readily endure. I can ramble all I want about my opinions but at the end of the day, many of my friends willingly choose not to listen at all and thus I have often learned it is best to say nothing and not ruin the friendship which might someday become crucial if my friends are ever unfortunate enough to fall into the mishaps that I unwillingly foresee. Often there is little I can do but sit and wait.

For this particular friend, it would be different if the guy she was going to marry was abusive or if she herself were somehow disabled or particularly vulnerable to living with a man who is far from being on par with excellence. However, in this particular case it is neither. I don’t think the day will come where he will ever turn around and beat his wife; and should she ever want to leave provided that her body continues to obey her as it does now, my friend will have no difficulty packing her own bags and walking out the door (or packing his bags and shoving him out).

Often it seems that the most loving thing is to give a friend the freedom to make mistakes while at the same time committing yourself loving them. I know this because I have gotten myself into similar, albeit more temporary situations. After one particularly hard separation, a friend called me and admitted that he saw it coming months before. “Why didn’t you tell me,” I bemoaned half angrily, half in mourning. He pointed out that despite his best intentions, I probably wouldn’t have listened anyways. And indeed knowing my faults as I do, had he expressed his reservations it might have made me all the more stubborn when it was time to get out. Forcing me to listen to him would without a doubt made the situation ten times worse.

I watch them walk down the aisle. Perhaps I am imagining problems or telling futures that belong to someone else and not to my friend. There is little I can do now as she prepares to put the ring on his finger and announce to everyone that they know their love is a commitment they are willing to work at no matter what the times may bring or the heartaches that may come as a result. All I can think sitting in the back pew, not knowing if I feel uncomfortable because everyone is feeling joy or something else telling me that this isn’t right.

I just hope they make it.

I was sending my electric chair careening down Tottenham Court Road while in abject anger. My muscles were tense, I was doing everything possible to dodge in and out of pedestrians and not get stuck behind any slow-moving tourists. Having just been told that my disability was going to prevent me from achieving my dreams, I was currently wishing that the instructor I had just left would fall down the stairs of her flat onto the icy pavement below and break a leg that evening if for no other reason than to show her just how frustrating having a condition that was less than ideal was. Then I remembered her crooked back and knobbly hands that were riddled with arthritis. I take a deep breath and slow my wheelchair to a reasonable walking pace, reminding myself that she does know on some level what it is like not to have the perfect body. She can empathize if she chooses to. She knows the frustration of hands which will not obey her brain and feet that shuffle along the floor that used to run when she was a girl. She knows her condition is becoming a chronic illness, and she is terrified. It seemed a little absurd, but I have to constantly remind myself of the frailty of the human condition, even as a person with a disability, an uncooperative body, looking the beast of frailty in the eye. I often forget that bodies break down because, according to some, mine was never built properly to begin with. I forget that, unlike me, most individuals don’t have a history of years struggling with their own physique under their belt by the time their physical capacity begins to deteriorate. I forget all of this and attempt to remember these simple and unalienable facts of life whenever anyone stands in opposition.

Sometimes, even after remembering the state of human affairs I would still like to speed up the process by running over a few toes and making certain people have to use crutches for six weeks just so that they can get a taste of my reality. I once had a high school teacher explain that it was a small kink in human DNA which causes differing characteristics. A tiny microscopic difference between all of us human beings creates so many silly boundaries and absurd demarcations as to what an individual considers normal and fully human and what some people would consider substandard. The most universal thing about the human condition however, is our own vulnerability and the fear that we all have of succumbing to it, but regardless of our level of terror brought about by the idea of opening one’s self wide and being honest about one’s condition, be it mental emotional or physical, inevitably we all find ourselves in vulnerable positions. To have relationships, to accept intellectual risk and encourage progress, just getting on a bike and riding down the street, getting into a car, stepping onto an aircraft, all of these choices, events, are the stuff that life is inevitably made of. Without these, the new ideas, the desire to mobilize ourselves, life would hardly be worth living so we need to accept that sometimes we do make ourselves vulnerable if for anything at all, but to experience life.

The absurdity of it all is that we continue to react negatively when someone does fall victim to their own vulnerability. Perhaps because some conditions such as arthritis, birth defects, and broken limbs are often out of our control. However if a condition is inevitable, what would ever possess us to lash out or entrap the victim of that condition? We wouldn’t think of becoming irritated by a fourteen year old because she menstruated for the first time. Such a change is, after all, is part of the human experience regardless of how awkward it may be. And yet, we often cannot look a person on his deathbed in the eye, much less our friend who was once perfectly able bodied now confined unexpectedly to a wheelchair after being struck down while in prime physical condition because of some ridiculous accident.

My impatience with the people who fall victim to these absurd beliefs , that life is only livable if one has full use of all four of his limbs and is the ideal weight, height, and intelligence comes from such peoples lack of experience. They have yet to learn what it is like to be dependent on other people who have very little in common with themselves. How, when you are hungry and you want a meal, it doesn’t matter what that persons’ skin color, religious or political beliefs are, all that matters is if they are willing and able to prepare hot food when one is considered unsafe in the kitchen. This forced dependency on each other, the ability to serve others unlike ourselves, and be served by individuals who you would never expect service from, it may well be these circumstances that make us vulnerable, and without them, we begin to lose our humanity.

It is one thing for a teacher to assume because of my physical condition I am unlike her and unable to find a place in “her society.” But the fact is, she is much closer to becoming like me than she would like to believe. It is the fact of living that one misread stoplight or piece of poor judgment on anyone’s part, not only our own, can cause us to wake up completely changed, dependent and confined in ways we never thought possible. I suppose in a way it is hard for me to remember that in her stubbornness to deny her flaws and weaknesses. She and I are much more alike than I care to admit.