My Blog :: mental meanderings in the life of a man that is physically challenged living in a world full of people who are walking around him wondering if his sexuality even exists.

On the 10th of August in 1979 was born a child  who seemed to be the same as everyone else accept for a small hole in his back that he had to have closed immediately after birth. Being lifeflighted out of the hospital as a little baby, being torn away from his parents even if they were able to follow you to the place you needed to go and be able to stay and wait for you throughout the procedure seeing you all stitched up and crying in pain from the stitches in your back.

Your lying there crying not knowing how to convey these feelings to the people around you other than screaming your precious little head off. then a couple of days later the doctors come in and tell your parents your child will never walk again.

This feeling takes a while to sink in for them i am sure. not knowing how to take care of a physically challenged child never having ever even seen one much less ever live with one as a baby. the medical bills would be outrageous he would have to be in strollers and walkers and wheelchairs for the rest of his life but that would only be after he went through another surgery, having to be covered in a body cast from head to toe with  his legs spread out just to set your legs straight only to find out that it didnt take and you have to have it redone all over again. 

Finally, being able to wear braces to achieve some semblance of walking to feel somewhat accustomed to your life as a physically challenged person not knowing yet even what that means in your immature little life. as you grow older you also begin to notice that you have something inside you that isnt supposed to be  there. You have a scar on your belly and a line running down your body then you find out that line is a tube in your head that has been attached to your brain to essentially keep you alive.

You ask your mother what it is and she tells you it is called a shunt and if you didnt have it your brain would be so swollen you couldnt live a normal life, well even more normal than what your already experiencing. As his years travel on he is faced with many many awkward moments in school and in life learning to use his walker and crutches and trying to deal with all the stares and gawks of all the kids around him, feeling very awkward and very shy around the other kids but  somewhere in his mind he realized that shying away from people would leave him lonely and not able to have any friends. 

So he pushed forward and he began to make friends and even found some other friends like him in certain places. This made him feel very very comfortable with in his own skin and he became a very happy loving caring youth.

As life went on he grew up around everyone in school and in life walking around him in his mind he wondered why he ws the only different one. As a kid he never understood what the doctors said or anything they were telling his parents, he could understand the words and understand what was coming out of the doctors mouth but he didnt really comprehend what heard.

The words spina bifida were alien to him and also to his parents no one really knew what that was or what was even entailed in the disease. Back when he was born there really wasnt a cure for it or as was said earlier no one knew what it was or what caused it and to this day no one really still does know much about it. as he grew up and got older the looks and gawks lessend and he began to accept himself in his crutches and walker but that was burning him out so he began using a wheelchair.

While this is a bit more confining and a LOT more stare inducing this peice of machinery is a wonderful thing. It makes it much easier to get around and it is alot more fun to roll around in and go faster than everyone else. But again as he grew older and he began to get used to his wheelchair he still went through school being bullied and picked on but he traversed on through that and came out a much stronger more bolder person for it.

Once he became of a sexual age he realized that this would be quite more difficult than it would be for most humans. he couldnt feel anything from the waist down and he really didnt seem to have desires like other people did he didnt understand what it was to be aroused or excited. all he knew is that everytime he saw something attractive he got hot and flushed.

But he never really understood why that is until he got older still and realized that there was such a thing as sexuality in a physically challenged human and to this day he is still learning lots of things and is enjoying every single minute of his newly found sexuality it turns him on just to not know what lies ahead and to be able to discover things and ask questions and question everything in his life. the many things he has yet to discover excite him greatly and that makes him very curious.