Finding my people
I drove a couple of hours to try a new gym this morning. My phone pinged this as the location of a hand-cycling taster session I wanted to attend. I thought it would be a routine day. I’d get some good exercise and a chance to meet people. I had no idea what joy awaited me. I will hold onto today for a very long time.
I figured this would be a gym like any other. But the entry hall declared that this was where the paralympics were first created. I looked around in amazement as I saw gym goers using wheelchairs, using crutches or walkers, using accessible gym equipment in a wonderfully inclusive space. My mouth hung open as I realised that this was a gym built for disabled people. I had no idea that such a place even existed and here I was standing in the foyer.
The world is generally not built for disabled people. Daily interactions create a thousand small frictions that together quickly become abrasive. The efforts we must make just to participate in this world are exhausting and necessitate a kind of watchful vigil to stay safe. I always know where the nearest accessible toilet is. I Google whether every location I visit is accessible by chair. I watch the pavement for obstacles that, if I miss, will catch a wheel of my chair and throw me to the ground. The peril of an inaccessible world forces me to maintain that mindful vigil everywhere I go.
The experience of disability can also be dramatically isolating as the common, sometimes defining features of my life become increasingly alien to the people around me. For most people thinking about the next few years is reasonable, they can plan for the future, ponder the jobs they might move on to, what they’d like their lives to look like. But my life isn’t predictable enough for me to be in those conversations. I met someone new at the weekend and he asked me at what age I plan to retire. I had to tell him that there is no guarantee I’ll be able to work to retirement, or to live beyond it.
Yet here I was in a space built for people like me, surrounded by people like me. The relief at being able to lower my guard, to finally relax into a place, released a tension I hadn’t even noticed I had been holding.
The hand-cycling was happening on the track outside. I headed out there somewhat speechless and found the kind person running the taster day. As I approached he saw what I imagine was my jaw still dragging on the ground behind me and he looked at me with some understanding. He asked me if I was ok and I blurted out how I’d been using a wheelchair for 18 months and that in that time I hadn’t really met many other disabled people and I for sure have never seen a place like this.
He smiled at me broadly: ‘You have found your people.’
I’m going to be straight with you that I very nearly burst into tears and crumpled into this person’s strong arms. But I straightened myself, sucked the tears back into my ducts, and allowed him to lead me to a hand-cycle. I sat down in the low seat, almost horizontal. My feet slotted into stirrups by the front wheel. My hands gripped onto thick cylindrical pedals. Nearby a group of likeminded folk were preparing to venture out onto the track. I drove some force through the pedals and my cycle responded. I began to fly. A group of 7 of us pushed together in the spring sunshine, doing laps, learning to slipstream and to navigate a slalom and to sprint.
When it was time for a break I found it hard to get out of the hand cycle. You need a reasonable amount of power in your legs to lift yourself from a nearly horizontal position and with my nerves warm from the sunshine, and the workout, I could not bring enough power to bear. I slid off to the side with all the control of an unset panna cotta and oozed to the ground. Getting up from the floor was equally difficult. I searched for my determination, my strength, and I felt that vigilant part of me reach for her sword, ready to become belligerently independent, to turn down every offer of help, to pull myself up by my bare hands. But before she could draw it, a hand reached down to me. I saw an expression of understanding, of kinship, and of kindness. I took his hand, allowed him to lift me to my feet. His arm remained close, a little outstretched, as I found my balance. For a moment I felt self-conscious until I looked around to find that getting out of the chairs was hard for everyone, because everyone was like me. We took care of one another, fetching crutches and limbs, helping as needed. The kindness and affirmation we all shared filled my heart. I smiled. I was home.
As the day rolled on we shared stories, we cheered each other on, we laughed. We laughed so much and so hard that my face hurt.
With all my work in my chair, I knew I had become strong. Seeing myself among these people, these champions, was all the more empowering. These were people who heard the sound of fate’s dice hitting the table, saw those dice turn against them, and responded with abject defiance. I know that the world’s expectations had been a barrier for them all to transgress. That more often than not the world told them implicitly that what they were trying to do was impossible, as it did with me. But in the face of that expectation, of what is generally considered ‘possible’ for a disabled person to be in this world, we sat astride our disabilities like warriors on horseback.
We don’t just fight against the perils of disability in a no-thought-given-to-disability world. We fight for pure unbridled joy. We are funny and passionate with a deep compassion for one another and our shared limitations. When we were out together we didn’t pity each other for a moment. We lamented the challenges we faced together. We understood our common experiences implicitly. But beneath everything was a shared defiance in the face of it all.
The laughter we shared was a battle cry of joy, a claim to true happiness, unashamed, defiant, free.
And I’m so very proud to say that today I joined this band of heroes. Pushing to keep up with such powerful and wonderful peers. Laughing, making jokes, bringing all my strength to bear to fly around the track together. I felt for the first time that I was glad to be disabled, to be part of this community, to share something so rare and precious with such incredible new friends.
At the end of the day we took selfies, we said goodbye knowing that we’d been part of something special. In my car driving home I thought about the experience, about my new friends, and I cried.