My Shoes

Imagine being invisible unless you’re in a crosswalk. A superhero with the street as your Kryptonite. Dismissed before you can utter a word. As if you were mute and held a dry erase board with a scribbled message. Unable to get help reaching a bottle of hot sauce on an upper shelf. So unseen, you can leave stores with merchandise in your lap, tripping security censors but not drawing a guard, just confused looks. Having a nice pair of shoes but never letting their soles touch any soil. Feeling disregarded by a society moving too fast to allow you a space on the train.
This is the plight of myself and many, many more like me. The disabled in wheel chairs who, many, do not need, nor would allow, someone to push them. Physical motivation is a source of pride, for us, and will not let it be taken by some half-assed do good-er that would not welcome us to dinner but would push us out of his way, feigning charity. I do not like malls. I can steal merchandise all day because no one sees me until I go to the food court and try to push a chair out of my way. You may think I’m unappreciative but I offer you my shoes for a day, then we can talk. Because you don’t know, until you know.
This morning I was slapped by a lady that I collided with who was walking with her head down and arms behind her back. The slap stunned me, the nerve of this woman, with two legs and WALKING! I dismissed her and said, “You can walk!” And rolled off. People who can walk are so unaware of their surroundings I feel I need a bullhorn on sidewalks. I have never been so aware of my surroundings, front and back, side to side. Because in a wheel chair you need to be. As to not to run-over toes or bump a baby stroller. In the past and not a source of pride, I stole from a store, the same store, for three years straight only getting caught once but the manager did not have the nerve to ask me to open my back-pack. And I continued after that. I stole bottles of liquor just to prove a point, to friends. I felt, literally, invisible. Though I got free merchandise, it began to hurt. Over, and over. Why was I so different? A guy at a bus stop told me that he didn’t see me as any different than anyone else. An anonymous, random, man. But the store didn’t see me at all.
I don’t want special treatment and would reject it if offered. Only recognition. There is a world outside of you. Maybe lower than you, but it’s there, and for some people, that’s all they get to see. Bound to a rolling device by illness, injury or both, as in my case. I am just as valid and sometimes more, than the guy standing next to you. I don’t get fall down drunk, anymore, there’s a plus, but I also have given up alcohol. The life that has led me to this point I do not wish on ANYONE, enemy, pedophile, mass murderer, anyone. It was traitorous, and still is hard, but getting recognition for surviving it by you noticing that I am here, would make me feel a little bit better.
The scars I bear are deep, some so deep that you cannot see them. Those were the most painful. But we all bear scars. I’m not trying to say I’m unique or special. Just that my scars have landed me in a wheeled device, that I don’t even like, but cannot afford a better one at this time. And being told that you will never walk again at age 28 as casual as a waiter reciting the lunch menu, or any age for that matter, is a dagger shoved deep. But misses an artery somehow, so you can live with it for the rest of your, now limited, life. I’ve had hospitals dismiss me, so it’s not just the individual to whom I speak. Institutions that thought that a street corner was a good place to discharge me, and did. But that is why this society has such eager lawyers.
When I was young, I had this unsubstantiated belief that disabled people were nice, I guess because, in my young mind, I figured they have gone through some amount of pain and understood empathy. My one-legged step father shattered that. But, for the most part, I make myself available to love. I said, for the most part, there are days where I fail miserably, many  days are like this, but that is my intention. And I hope to promote love wherever I go. Where I reside, now, a lot of people need to be spoken for, who cannot speak for themselves. I cannot rest until that is done. That’s just who I am, what I’m made of and the man I’ve developed into through my suffering.
I feel my personality overshadows my wheel chair, but I’m afraid that most won’t take the time to find that out. And I’m positive I’m not the only one. In fact, I know one, who needs to be pushed wherever he goes, but has a personality that makes you forget the chair is even there. And I never have heard a negative word leave his lips. He blows me away. Shot in the head six times, yet is still here. I always listen to him, even through the language barrier, because he is here  FOR A REASON and I know this for sure. I don’t want to miss a drop of wisdom he might be here to dispense. So I do what I can to gather enough of his language to hold a conversation and thus understand him better. This man is my inspiration and helps me get out of bed every morning to give this world. One more try.