Disability Pride Month- How I found a Community and Identify.

After two decades, the pain has accompanied me through every stage of life, hovering like an overprotective parent. I’ve never known a day without pain. It’s present on my brightest days and exists on my worst. For some, it hides and lays dormant for years but when it awakens, time stands still. Earth continues to spin but your world becomes riddled with a long list of “what if’s?” It’s the very thing that tethers me to this reality. A reality that is unlike one you previously imagined. It highlights the world as it showcases its lack of care for the afflicted. Which inevitably altered my own perspective on life due to the arrival of pain and illness.

To describe such a phenomenon requires a lived experience. I can describe the physical manifestation of pain or showcase the scars that outline my body, but the power pain has over the mind is one I can’t express with words alone. We often think pain only affects one specific area, becoming a localized issue. But, when pain attacks the body at a physical or molecular level, it taps into the mind of its host. The way pain engulfs you by highlighting your insecurities, leaving you vulnerable. I’ve wrestled with those feelings for some time now; hoping that someday that uneasiness evaporates. And it will, with time and a lot of self-reflection.

Though, I’ve shifted my perspective on how I deal with and conceptualize my pain. Instead of idling in that discomfort, I use it as a teaching tool. Now, don’t get me wrong those moments of despair and anxiety create a massive amount of trauma. Although fear creeps up ever so often, I am not fearful of the gnawing pain, I’ve made peace with it.

It’s the one constant in my life amongst the chaos that surrounds me. When the sun begins to rise and the earth continues to spin, I still hold space for my body to defy the odds the world has set forth for me. I’ve chosen to pour an abundance of love into my body because she’s carried me thus far. My body has experienced more trauma than I would care to admit, but she remains whole. Even after the catalyst some odd years ago that sent my body into a frenzy, she remains intact, begging to continue on.