Never Walked In High Heels

I’ve seen the commercials. The male announcer almost teases you with the idea that all your problems will be solved if you only buy the correct application for under a dollar. And from the stance of creative businesswoman, the App Store for the iphone is enthralling. With no overhead, a constantly changing storefront and boundless creativity, this is, without a doubt, the correct formula for the next stage of entrepreneurship for the new frontier.

If only that ‘boundless creativity’ would come in the form of faster evolution.

After all, what exactly is the use of a program which is an alarm clock on a device where one is automatically build in. Better yet, how about coming to and end of a fine dinner and being unable to calculate the tip without the help of your trusty technological companion. Or there’s always the program, that tells you about what other programs have come out and which other programs you need. (This one, much to my surprise, was not created by Apple.)

I bought an iphone in hopes to make my life as a disabled woman easier. With life in this position one is dependent on barons of industry, invention, and software to make life not simply more convenient but also simply livable. To say that my iphone has changed my life would be an understatement. But I was also one of the first people investing in voice activation all the way back in 1994, and have since thrown money at nearly every piece of assistive technology conceivable. In the case of adaptive tech hardware and software, it really doesn’t matter what sort of resources you have, if can’t be sold to the mainstream population the software will not advance.

This is how we get over 200 software developers which create alarm clocks, and no program that will actually call a London black cab. After all, my friends argue, its easy to hail a cab off the street. But figuring out what fifteen percent of your dinner bill is… that’s a real challenge.

The App Store illustrates to me that the leaders of industry are few and far between while those who have the programming skills but lack the imagination are well in abundance. It’s proof that just because there are lots of hands which can make the industry move forward, without the brains there is little guarantee of it doing so. Looking at what sells today will only show you what you should’ve been selling yesterday. And so to hop on the ‘alarm clock bandwagon’ only serves to tell you where the industry is. As with any other form of progress the market has to look to the needs of people who are not in the mainstream to figure out what comes next.

When I decided to trek through the mud in order to throw my acorn branch into the fire, I was also agreeing to make both my wheelchair and my ankle length coat saturated with grey mud. So through the three inch deep muck I went, all in the name of increasing my cultural awareness. The tradition goes that if you throw the branch of an oak tree into a bonfire on Twelfth Night, you will be blessed all year. It was more than superstition. The elders would approach the flames tenuously, trying to keep their footing, throw their branches in and cross themselves while muttering a prayer.

This is when I have to admit that I wasn’t going through this just for my own cultural edification. It’s a good cover, but deep down there was a part of me that was hoping that good luck would come as a result.

What is it in us that still believes that if we do X, avoid Y, and call upon Z good things will be bestowed upon us? Are we waiting for someone else to make our life brighter by not acknowledging that we ourselves only have the power to propel us towards our dreams? Or perhaps we know that some things are out of our control and these are the attempts to nudge things in the directions we think they ought to go. And although most of us know deep down that these attempts are feeble, we do them anyway… even in the rain and mud.

I forget its source, but somewhere I heard that psychics get asked questions which mainly fall into three categories: love, money, and health. When I was younger I somehow thought that these concerns were silly. I don’t know why I couldn’t wrap my head around the notion that everyone would be concerned about these three issues, but now that I’m older I can see them popping into my worries. And after a few frustrating but predicted years, I found myself taking somewhat extreme measures to ensure that this year would go, if anything, more smoothly.

Deep down, I think we are all willing to take extreme measures to ensure things go our way. Some of the most horrific events in history can be attributed to this. If luck and blessings won’t serve us, then we will do it ourselves and all of a sudden a muddy coat looks like child’s play in front of what we are willing to destroy or deny so we can have what we want.

Its been just over a month since Twelfth Night, and I’m just flaking the last bit of mud off my coat. I remember throwing my branch in and being almost surprised at what I found myself wishing for and the long lasting dreams I suddenly forgot. Perhaps I am fooled as to what the desires of my heart actually are.

Several people have enquired about my mud caked coat over the past month. They all get excited when I tell them about a bonfire next to a mystical church that’s in the middle of nowhere. The mud and rain adds to the story’s appeal. And I realize that after barely a month, it’s already been a great year.

“Is it easier if you are disabled from the beginning?” she asks me on the phone. My friend has been sick for months and she recently had to break down to get a handicapped parking badge. Not the red ones which are temporary, but a blue one. This unknown medical condition is going to be hers for quite some time. Maybe even forever.

“No, it isn’t.” At first I can’t explain why having a disability from the day you are born isn’t any easier. It’s a question that a lot of therapists have asked me. Kind of like, do you think it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Do you think it’s better to have walked and then lost the ability rather than to never have the ability in the first place? And yes, I do, actually. Being a child with a physical disability is one of the worst things you can imagine. You don’t play on playgrounds or get to bake cookies like everyone else. You sit and watch and are more or less at the mercy of people deciding to be your friend rather than making your own.

When we are kids, regardless of abilities or not, the fact is, we have no idea what we’re signing up for in life. Even in high school we think, go to college, get married, get a job, everything will run smoothly. What we don’t realize is that human bodies fail. All of them. Fail us, and what we want them to do, eventually. My mother used to say the minute we are born we begin to die (she’s normally a very cheerful woman) and while mentally you realize that’s true, you don’t feel the impact of it until you are much older and your body does begin to break down and fail.

My sophomore year at university, all of us saw my friend’s body simply revolt against her. For days she couldn’t get out of bed and see past three feet in front of her face. She would recover, and then relapse, and then recover and then relapse, each recovery time being shorter and the relapse time being longer. Now she is married and is trying to figure out life as a legally named disabled person.

In the past few years watching her, I have begun to see my other friends, who are as young as I am, have their bodies revolt and receive permanent conditions that they never dreamed of getting at this age. It’s forced me to wonder what will happen twenty-five years down the line when I really watch them age, watch them not be able to climb a set of stairs as quickly as they used to, or even after an accident that leaves them paralyzed. What to tell them when they ask me if it’s easier to be disabled from the beginning? What to say when they need advice and they want to be told that they will be able to rehabilitate themselves and life will be as easy as it once was. For that matter, why do I think I’m wiser and above further ailment simply because I’m disabled to begin with? My condition, if you don’t take care of yourself, means that you will age faster. Arthritis has a higher risk of setting in at a very young age, and there’s little to stop the aging process even if you’re disabled to begin with. Your body will break down even more.

We are at a friend’s wedding, and a week after getting her handicapped placard, my old university friend is feeling well enough to join us for the bridal shower and help us get ready in the bride’s chamber. The day is full of joy and life, everything that a wedding ought to be. She follows me around, helping me open doors when I can’t manage them and the flowers, making sure my dress is on straight, walking with me to the bathroom and constantly holding my hand. She will not let me go. In the bathroom stall I am unable to lock the door and she offers to hold it closed. She is bending down and a thought suddenly occurs to me, “Don’t make yourself pass out with your head below your knees.” She immediately sits on the floor, realizing that this is a distinct possibility for her.

“I guess I wouldn’t be very helpful to you in England anymore.” I hear the small voice on the other side of the bathroom stall and it breaks my heart realizing how much has changed and how much her world has been limited recently. The thing is, I wouldn’t say that she would not be of help to me. Friends, regardless of their physical ability, true friends, are always helpful along the way, in ways that are unique to them and the temporal bodies they occupy.

“He who says it cannot be done should not be the person doing it” –Chinese Proverb

I used to think that every man wanted to see progress in the world. When I was little, I simply saw things getting continually better. Computers got better, sleeker, more responsive, we celebrated men like Martin Luther King Jr. and learned about the appalling slave trade of the South. History for me was a progressive march towards finding man’s rights and making the world more livable for all. And so I thought, this is what everyone wanted—that we all work together to make the world a better place.

A friend of mine this week told me that my dream was impossible. Just flat out no, if, ands, or buts, it was never going to happen, so I should quit trying now, impossible. And though it was the first time, coming from him, it was not the only time in my life that I had heard that something was, “impossible.”

People who say things are impossible are more often than not proven wrong. The company IBM used to say that someday there would be a market for as many as 5 computers in the world, and at the time I can see why people would think having multiple computers in one home was impossible. It’s not that I believe they were vicious; it’s just that they didn’t know any better. Can you imagine what folks said to the Wright brothers as they built their airplane or NASA for that matter? Again, ignorance and a lack of imagination are often two of the greatest things inhibiting progress.

However, I didn’t realize until recently that most people are really quite comfortable remaining ignorant and having no imagination. This is the newest disturbing fact I’ve found in my adult life. Rather than reaching beyond what they think they are capable of, people stay stuck, sometimes for perfectly good reasons like putting food in their family’s mouths, but they are stuck nonetheless and then resent others who fight to remain unstuck. Change does happen beyond the wildest dreams. If you could go back in time and tell Harriet Tubman that we would one day have an African American president, she would probably have been shocked. Or what about someone recent as Martin Luther King Jr, who made his “I Have a Dream” speech exactly 40 years before Obama received the democratic nomination at the national convention. He probably would have laughed—they both would have, and chances are they wouldn’t have believed it. My entire life, people have told me that things are “impossible,” and recently I heard it from a close friend—someone who I thought would never say that word to me. After 25 years, I would think folks would know better then to begin to tell me that something is impossible. Everything is possible, and particularly for those of us who are willing to sacrifice what it takes to reach for it. Dreams of justice and equality, honest representation, and balanced creativity for tomorrow, must always survive the inadequacies of today. Dreams worthy of coming true will always come true.

I will close by addressing the men against innovation and progress. Perhaps you are one of the people who insist on living in fear, or perhaps your horizons stop with the limitation s you see before you. Either way your world is small. And while people with small worlds have an important and practical place in society, you do not know the entirety and vastness of the universe. None of us can. How can you begin to say that something is impossible when you’ve simply never seen it and never dared to explore what it would take to achieve it? Just because it is something you have never seen does mean that it does not exist. You have chosen your world and it is compact and probably serves you well, but please let us choose ours.

At what age can you disagree with people who used to be your elders?

During a recent conversation, I had to listen to a former tutor of mine essentially tell me how to run my life. He hadn’t seen me in three years and the difference between a 22 year old and a 25 year old is often striking- or at least I hope it is. Every argument he made, I knew as according to my own life, that factually he was wrong, but he didn’t want to hear about my successes. He only heard in his mind that I was a failure and needed to get out of the situation that I was currently in. Eventually, I intended to hang up on him, but decided this would be disrespectful. He was after all, a great mentor of mine and had helped create me as the woman I was—even though currently, that woman was highly irritated.

The problem with correcting your elders is that to them you’ll always be young. You’ll always be in need of their advice and mentorship, and they will always –numerically at least- have more life experience than you. As a kid I was constantly reminded to be respectful of my elders. Phrases such as “Don’t talk to him in that tone young lady” or “He’s done a lot for you. You might want to show a little gratitude once in a while,” continue to haunt me when I want to speak out against bad advice. So more often than not, even though I’m opinionated, I keep my mouth shut and try to let my superior come to his own conclusions.

But any relationship across generations, be it parent to child or student to teacher, changes as the younger individual grows up. It has to. If the adult doesn’t let the relationship change, it will be forever damaged, and if the younger doesn’t force the relationship to change he will be forever coddled by his mentor. Growing up across an intergenerational relationship can prove to be extremely difficult and damaging to both parties, but it has to be done. The switch between a vertical relationship (for example, teacher and child) to a horizontal relationship (such as peers) has to make that switch in order to still function.

But at some point during that switch from vertical to horizontal, you realize as you grow up that no adult has all the answers. In fact, many of them have just a few more than even you do. People make up their lives as they go, and that’s okay as long as they give you the freedom to do likewise. That moment where you realize that nobody knows everything, can be a combination of one of the most frightening but also liberating moments you will ever face. At that point, the world is truly yours, and we, regardless of age are all equal and trying to get by.

Older generations will always try to warn you against their mistakes, which is good, as well as fruitful because your mistakes should always be your own and if that means repeating the exact same ones that your parents created, at least make sure that you put your own special stamp of dysfunction on it. Don’t let people use you to fix their own past. What that is, is what I call a recycled life. People who didn’t succeed at living their lives for themselves that first time, and so they will try and make you live their lives now. And sometimes you may even have a revelation before one of your elders does, and that’s okay. If they are honest with themselves and with you, they will admit that they are still learning to grow up as well.

“Hi. Why are you still in the UK? I hate London. I hated it when I was there three years ago. Nobody is friendly…I don’t get what you’re doing spending your time over there.”

This was how he opened his phone call to me. The next hour was a barrage of attacks about how not everyone got what they wanted out of life and it was time for me to come home. Every time I pointed out that I owned my own company or that I was paying my rent just fine, it didn’t seem to matter. Then came the killer statement, “What you need to do is move to New York City and write about being disabled for disabled people.” It was a suggestion that was completely impractical. I’ve never been to New York and I don’t know anyone in the entire state. The suggestion was insidious as it prayed on my faults and immature desires to quit and go home after a difficult year. But when you know it’s the wrong thing to do, and the last thing you need to hear is that you should quit and go back home. It was insulting because after 10 years of knowing me, all he thought I was capable of doing was writing at my desk to a 100% disabled audience.

If the phone call had been from a family member, I would have been able to handle it better. But this was one of my best friends—someone who had taught me since I was 15. I sat in the back of his classroom with my hand raised for three years asking questions and learning about the world as he saw it. A high school teacher’s job is to prepare his students to face the frightening prospects of an infinite universe, and to equip those students with the tools they need to succeed beyond there wildest dreams. This was the man who taught me that my mind and my capacity for thought and innovation was unlimited and a great gift to be embraced. He was even a man who went to bat for me against the high school administration, insisting that I would not be put in a special education classroom and swearing up and down that doing so would be a “grave injustice to her mind.”

And here he was now, not recommending or even insisting, but it felt like demanding, that I quit and move back to the States in order to go the safe route. “Most people want A, B, and C out of life but they don’t get A, B, and C. They have to settle for E, D, F. You’re job is to figure out what kind of E, D, and F you have to offer the world.” Is this the same person that I read Catcher and the Rye with? The same man who told me stories about going to Morocco and encouraged me to do likewise after college graduation? He had been one of my support structures and was now feeding me platitudes about life that I wouldn’t have even thought him to believe.

I finally hung up on him after and hour. I couldn’t take anymore. He continued despite my insistence that I was paying my rent, I was learning from the real world, and there were things in London I couldn’t leave. “Like what?” he questioned indignantly. Like the company, my company and the friends I’ve found over the past three years, all of the professional connections I had built up, my home, my church, my life. Even though the going was tough, I couldn’t just get up and walk away from it.

After a few days of cooling off, I realized that one of two things had happened. Not seeing him for three years meant that I no longer knew him, and he no longer knew me. Either way there was a rift, and given his response to my pleads and insistences that he see the truth, I wasn’t sure I wanted to fix it. His mid 20s may have been the time that he decided to leave Morocco to come back home and teach, but I wasn’t ready to do anything of the sort even as noble as teaching was. I still feel deeply called to take on the challenges of the unfamiliar and boundless world he taught me about. Not going to familiar territory to receive the consistent paycheck and live the easy life. When I was younger, he challenged me to do exactly what I am doing. His current insistence of dropping what I am doing just because it is difficult doesn’t fit with the worldview that he helped to give me. And so, although I’m not sure who it was I talked to over the phone, I refuse to go home and lead the comfortable life. If that means I am a disappointment, or so beyond what a mentor thought I was capable of then so be it. Part of growing up is realizing that nobody has all the answers, and that we’re all really trying to get by on a ninth grader’s wet shoestring. The second we realize that about ourselves, our parents, our mentors, and everyone else we meet, the horizons open up and you see the freedom to make yourself and this world what you want it to be—something you never knew you had.

“Dear Athena, thank you so much for the invitation to see you perform at Sadler’s Wells next month. Unfortunately, due to the current conditions of the economy, I feel that I cannot take on any additional clients as it would not be fair to the clients I am currently serving. Thank you again for your invitation. Regards”

Okay. I get it. The economy is bad, really bad actually. The UK and the rest of the world are slowly grinding to a standstill. People are being laid off. The housing market, which dictates so many other seemingly unrelated things, now seems to be everywhere—shooting up one minute and failing the next. It’s rough and nobody likes it. But now it seems that on top of all the other problems, people are actually starting to use the economy as an excuse for everything.

And when I say everything, I mean everything—completely unrelated items such as kicking the dog when you get home, or not considering clients for a potential acting agency. You and your wife got in a fight? Blame the economy. Late for work three days in a row? Well, it’s because the economy is ruining public transportation. Kids not doing well in school? It’s because the economy is so bad that nobody can focus anymore. All these problems are very real and money does affect everything, even corners of our lives that we can’t imagine. But there comes a point in time, where people can only blame their issues on their own choices and not on external problems.

I can appreciate that being an acting agent in London is hard, very hard. So hard in fact, that in the best of times an agent might not come to your show. She’s not interested, or busy, or she has a full roster already. All perfectly acceptable reasons for not coming out to a production. To hide behind conditions when they have nothing to do with the present situation is to ultimately change excuses to consistently avoid the truth. Just say you are unable to make it to the show, or you can’t take any more clients. That reason is actually as acceptable now as it was three years ago.

And the fact is this entire letter is reflective of how we got into the economic mess in the first place. People blaming other people rather than taking action will always lead to disaster be it war, economic downfall, or social upheaval. And then to say that something wouldn’t be, “fair to other clients,” is absurd. Nothing is fair, I get that, and within a certain acting agent’s roster, clients are competing against each other for the same job. Is that fair? But there is a world of difference between a job being inherently competitive (and therefore refined by competitive people) and one that is ground to a halt by a bad economy.

If a man didn’t make the cut for his NCAA college basketball team, would that be blamed on the bad economy as well?

In college when we would go the health center, everything was blamed on a virus. You could go with a broken leg and the nurse would tell you that the broken leg virus has been going around all season. Now it seems we have the bad economy virus. Yes, it is extremely easy to lose both hope and momentum when in a recession, but that is the last thing any of us should want to do. Closing our hands, clenching our fists, and hiding under the bed in fear of what my happen will only serve to make a bad situation infinitely worse. If everyone responded this way how could we ever hope to bring about the level of optimism and opportunity needed to make things better. You’re scared. I’m scared. We’re all terrified as to what may happen, but the truth is that the doors that seem to be closing because of the economic downturn were always difficult to open in the first place. Storms are always hard to weather and challenges come and go. The difference is that Fox News and CNN don’t usually focus on it when you’re terrified. Keep your hands out and open, look for the opportunities that still exist, and take sensible risks. The rules are really the same as always. These include our most basic instinct: Refuse to become paralyzed when everyone else around you is doing just that.

             It’s the mother lode of clichés. You hear the recording full of static as Roosevelt takes a deep breath. “The only thing we have to fear is…” dramatic pause. Yeah, I get it, I know what you’re going to say. Come on, come on, come on… “fear itself!” The punch line has been delivered, and we can all go back to dismissing the bromide all Americans have heard a thousand times before.

              I’m sure when FDR made that speech he wasn’t expecting it to be replayed until it had lost all meaning for future generations. I never really thought too much about it until this weekend, when I found myself coming from a small town paralyzed by fear and then it took on a whole new meaning. What I always assumed it to mean was that people had nothing to fear and that there was this feeling out there called fear which was only for fools to react.

              And then this weekend I spent time with people who lived in stagnant fear. Not terror mind you, but plain, simple, fear. The difference is striking. People all over the world live in justifiable terror where there is unspeakable violence, horrible threats, and a justifiable unknown of what tomorrow may bring. According to the Oxford American dictionary, fear is classified as “a belief” which, by definition may or may not be based in fact. Conversely, terror is “a state” caused by something directly. Terror, it seems, is concrete and is caused by dangers whereas fear, is not. The people that I am speaking of live in fear, although of exactly what I do not know.

              I know they are living in fear because fear is paralyzing. This is what I have failed to notice about Roosevelt’s statement until now, the reason we must be afraid of fear is because this emotion, above all others, stops us dead in our tracks. By definition, you cannot run from a belief because there is no way to tell what direction leads towards safety. Fear lurks around every corner because it manifests itself in your mind. Thus, your entire world begins to shrink down to where the shadows don’t reach. But any wall brings its own manufactured shadow.

              I could give you the specifics of the fearful nature of the people I spent my weekend with, but in truth it seems like they’re mere generalities describing the fearful times we live in today. One woman was afraid the world was ending, another that her money would soon be worthless so she refused to spend any of it. There was a farmer afraid of fixing his tractor because of what his co-operative would think of his budget, and a kid refusing to go to school because he may fail out. These are the nebulous fears which follow us all and a person from a different demographic may even call them worries. But they each, in one form or another, stop life.

              Perhaps it took another economically tough time for me to understand what fear actually is. I would hear that there was only one thing to fear and wonder what anyone could feel staring down the barrel of a gun which Roosevelt would deem an appropriate response. But as a man with polio, I’m guessing he knew fear and he knew terror. He knew the terror of a body slowly destroying itself across the hours, and the fears of having to figure out how to live life all over again. No doubt he saw that each was very different. And while terror causes you to embrace life as you’ve never gone after it before, fear can only lead to shunning it altogether. And while there are plenty of dark forces out there, the most frightening is the one in which you willingly surrender life.

It was a terrible year. I knew it was a terrible year when on New Year’s Eve, I saw a group of individuals coming out of their celebrations saying, “Next year has to be better, it cannot keep going as badly as this.” The following year did seem to be hard on everyone. Personally, I had a boyfriend walk out on me, lost my job, and dropped out of a masters program to which I had for years dreamed of getting in. I called my former teacher from high school one weekend, upset, frustrated, and about ready to put a hole through my wall.

“I seriously think I’m going to have some big life changing event just to get out of this horrible situation. Maybe I’ll become a lesbian.” I joked at him. Knowing that with his own homosexuality, he would get a kick out of this.

“No, don’t become a lesbian. You’d look terrible in flannel.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at his bluntness. He asked me what good was happening in my life and I struggled to come up with something. He asked what my new apartment was like and I told him about the plumbing that had broken three days before, and how I didn’t know where the money was going to come from to fix it. I burst into tears, saying, “This is not how I envisioned my life to go when I was in your class during high school. Not at all. What happened?” It was a struggle to get it back together, but I knew that if I kept sobbing into the phone, my teacher would never be able to comprehend a word I was saying.

“We’re living in the age of angst. There, Age of Angst, that should be the title of a book you write. Anyway, everyone’s having a hard time this year, not just you. And that’s ok. Sally has been having to take the past two weeks off. Her husband died two weeks ago. It was either a terrible accident, or, well, you know. He was always slightly bi-polar. So now she’s left with two young children, and very angry. I didn’t think she would be angry as much as grieving, but now anger is a large part of it.”

I stared at the phone, stunned, my jaw half open, before I felt the need to cry again for a former teacher of mine who was in extreme pain and heartache. During my year, she had just gotten married and the two of them were newlyweds, happy and faithful and full of the silliness that can only come out of a new marriage. She had no idea that this would happen. There wasn’t any sign of it. There had been friends that we all know who we have a pretty good notion from the get go that they’ll be in trouble sooner of later down their lives, but not Sally, and certainly not Sally and her husband as a couple. An early death and possible suicide was the last thing any of us could or would imagine for her. 

Truth be told, I honestly thought by the time I reached the age I was, that I would be married. Actually, growing up with movies such as the Little Mermaid, I thought it would be perfectly acceptable to get married at the age of 16. Of course, I also thought by now I would own my own pony, business, and would have completed law school. None of which, of course, is true. Turns out the pony needed too much food, the great idea of a business still has not come yet, and if things stay as they are right now, I really have no desire to go to law school. Life happens without warning and while some desires of ours are automatically built inside of us from day one, reality gets in the way, or at least rolls us into a person we never thought we would be. 

Perhaps it is a sign of youth that we can look at someone and say “well, that will never happen to me. He would never leave me like she was left. I will be able to stick to my ideals throughout, and eventually get exactly where I want to go.” Of course, things hardly work out according to our plans. Anne Lamot, says “If you want to see God laugh, show her your plans.” And it does seem that that’s often the case. 

But maybe this is all for the best that it couldn’t be any other way. When we are little, our parents tell us that we will have a life beyond our wildest dreams, and regardless of what we may think that means, at a young age we do indeed; at least I have had a life that far outweighs anything I could possibly imagine, and all of the dramas and thunderstorms ensured that the lows would be lower than I dared think about, and of course, the victories would be more surprising in the end.

In recent months, things have gotten a little bit better for me. Not much, but we’re going somewhere now. And I often think of Sally in my quiet moments, wondering how she’s doing, thinking of her teaching high school and raising two children on her own. Definitely not what any of us would sign up for in the beginning. With all that in mind, perhaps it is best we don’t know what’s in store for us when we are young. It would probably be too overwhelming to look at it all at once.