disabilty – Got Meghan's Blog

The only downside about getting a lot of ideas, getting them written out, and then scheduling them to different days of the week, is that you become very lazy and sometimes getting more ideas after that is difficult to come by. This is what I’ve been dealing with for almost two weeks now. The “Fast Friends” post was one of the posts I did later on in the week, but one of the last ideas I had floating around. Now I’m empty.

I loved doing one of these “Life Lately” posts the last time I was in a rut, so I thought I’d do another to hopeful get myself back on track. You see, I have tons of ideas after Christmas is over. I mean, I got all my New Year’s stuff that I could be working on right now, but I feel like I’m getting too ahead of myself and I’ll really be in a rut on what to do for that whole week of December. I can’t necessarily do any Christmas posts at the moment. Even though, I do know what I’m kind of getting from my mom and dad for Christmas, except for one thing. Yesterday, we went to the mall. It was more like a game of hide-and-seek because we kept losing Blondie. She wasn’t in the mood to stay with mom and I. Poor dad thought the entire place was too crowded for him so he kept to himself for most of the day. I’ve got to say though, I am pretty proud of myself. I told my mom about an idea that my nana and I had finally decided on, well it was my idea but she agreed on it. That was the first thing I did and was probably the cheapest thing(s) I bought throughout the whole day.

My birthday was in early November, I still had birthday money, most of it actually. So I got to spend it on myself and got to clear my conscience a bit too, I thought it was going to be like last year. My nana and I waiting until last minute to do our last DIY project of the year. It’s becoming a bit of a tradition for me to do something homemade and give it to my family members. I promised to myself I’d keep up the tradition, I’m not breaking it now. Since my parents kind of know what is going on, I think I’ll make theirs as my example for the DIY post for you guys. Anyways, there are some clothes that I know I got and can’t have them for 12 days. I did get three shirts that I was really hoping to wear before Christmas since I bought them, but my mom told me a couple of hours later after we got home that she will pay me the money back I spent on them if I wait for them. Considering we’re going shopping again sometime this week, I’ll take the money and shut up!

I swear though, I think everybody and their grandmother (literally! I saw quite a few old women in wheelchairs there!) was there at the mall. We could hardly get through Hot Topic because it was so damn crowded. Going to the mall on a Saturday with 13 days until Christmas is a bad idea. I think the only good thing we did enjoy was the fact we all got to have Chinese food. Who knew Honey Glazed chicken was as good as it was in your dreams. There are some things I’ve never done at the mall, one of those things is go into the restrooms there. I know that’s weird, but restrooms and dressing rooms are a wheelchair users enemy. I got into the bathroom there and we realized they had a wheelchair restroom at the corner. I loved seeing all these kids around, while I was out by the entrance way to HT, there was a little girl in her stroller and her mom walking in front of me and we locked eyes, I have to say “hello” and wave with my foot at them to see their reactions. Her mom said as they were past me that she was waving inside of her blanket. Too adorable!!

Sometime this week, we’re supposed to be going back out shopping. I have a couple more things to get for the project and then I’ll be done. We’ve also got to do our traditional Christmas cookies sometime this week too. Last year, we did them twice. Once at our house and the other at my nana’s. This year I’m using a table so my back doesn’t feel like it’s going to break in two. We also have to put our big Christmas tree in our house. I’m kind of planning on doing a blog post about both of those things, but explaining the meaning for some of our ornaments on our tree that we’ve had for over 23 years! Oh, my little tree has some decorative additions to it. I had my mom put some of my beaded necklaces I got from Plummer and such to wrap around the tree. It’s so cute! Everytime my mom comes home to work she plugs it into the socket to turn on the lights. It makes me happy and kind of festive! I won’t be as festive until I get pricked by the tree branches when we put it together. Now that’s a tradition that started on accident and somehow it happens every year.

When you have a child that has any kind of disability, you instantly try to make things easier for them as possible. Sometimes people go a little too far with this, almost to the point where they don’t have much of a choice in things that happens in their life. I have been a fairly independent person. Even as a kid, I would literally scoot on my butt as fast as I could go to catch up with the others. I would do everything in my power to be like everybody else. This is why I was the one who figured out that I could feed myself. According to my mom, she had given me my plate and sat it on the floor by me with a fork ready for her, but she said she had turned away for a minute to grab something and found me with a fork in one foot and a piece of hot dog in my mouth. I’d say that’s impressive and that talent only grew to more things for me to master. Writing, drawing, grabbing, texting, typing and driving my wheelchair around. As the years grew on, I started learning more and more to the point where there was no end in sight.

If you’ve been reading my posts from a year ago, you know that I don’t understand why people think I’m inspiration. I never have. It’s not that I don’t think I’m special but I know everybody sees me doing everything with my feet and sees the disability first, that’s who they define me as. A handicapped person. I just have never felt like one, even when I was around other kids with disabilities. I know that’s kind of mean to say but I was mainly around kids who were able-bodied and just saw myself apart of them. In my middle school days, I realized how uncomfortable I was in my own skin. The other girls could wear flip-flops and high heels. I couldn’t wear my sneakers longer than ten minutes before I’d fling them over to the other side of the room. I hated shoes. I just mainly envied the popular girls by the fact that they could do sports and had the cute boyfriends. Nobody wanted me and I didn’t understand that. I think after graduating not only did I finally see not one, but many lights.

I was too into impressing people.
I am a handicapped person, whether I like it or not.
Unless things are set in stone, don’t expect anything.
Nobody stays longer than they’re needed to.

I’m happy to say that after four years I have realized all four of these things. I wish I could go back in time to see my younger self in middle school crying herself to sleep in the middle of the night and tell her that she’ll understand why she’s feeling these things and she’ll grow to love herself. I do love myself but I still don’t see myself as an inspiration. I feel like I never will honestly. The more I learn to do with my toes the more attention I tend to draw to myself. Some of it is good don’t get me wrong, I say all this but it doesn’t mean I’m not proud of myself for learning ways to potentially help me in the future if I was ever to move out of the house one day. My nana has been teaching me different things lately, some of these things I’ve actually never done before and I’ve ended up surprising the heck out of myself. One of these things I had to do today about five times. My nana gets meals from these people and they bring them in boxes. I usually help her sort and she does the boxes. Well, after watching her and she showing me how to do it, I finally figured out how to get both of my feet and legs to mind long enough and close the boxes. By the last two, I was a pro!

The other one, we do everytime I go over there. Unless it’s my dad taking me over there then he is the one that gets my drink for me. We haven’t been doing the new way for that long but I have been talking about it a lot because I have never been able to open up a pop can before. My grandparents are having trouble with the tips of their fingers and I remember one day asking if I could try to open the can because I think something was injured. She had this neat little screw that just hooks on and it’s got two sides, so in a way makes easy but yet difficult when you’re in a rush because you have to turn it around! Well, we’ve done this about seven or eight times now and I’m happy to say it only took me probably four minutes to get it open today. However, we did have to stop a couple of times because my nana was doing other things in the meantime. So it took me about four minutes to get it turned around and open it. Plus, I wanted to get some proof for you all and even though my feet are not in these pictures they are there making sure the stinking chair doesn’t move the can back and onto the floor. It was bad enough that my nana had gotten two separate straws because she kept sticking them in her drink. Thank god it was just water and not her hot tea. We didn’t want to lose the can either. That wouldn’t been pleasant!