We stopped at a mall that we know well, we needed a break and it’s perfectly placed for us to do so. Our usual entrance, the most accessible one, was under construction so we found parking around the back side of the mall at the other end. We got out. We went in. I started pushing and in a few seconds became a little nauseous. I have a very physical reaction to being disoriented. I didn’t recognize the mall at all. I didn’t know the stores, I could see none of the familiar markers. I was not alone in this, Joe was equally lost.
We stopped for a second and gathered ourselves, we knew that we were in the same mall, but that didn’t help, it made us even more confused. Why are there none of our familiar markers? We stopped and looked at a map but it didn’t help. We knew where we were headed, we kept going. Finally we turned a corner and saw Johnny Rockets. We instantly knew where we were. We agreed that we’d never gone by Johnny’s and didn’t even know that part of the mall existed. We were both much more relaxed and the feelings of being lost in a space we didn’t recognize was gone.
On our way back, it was easy. We knew where the car was parked, we knew the right turns to make, we sailed past the stores we had seen for the first time. Our knowledge of that mall and all that it offered had expanded. Even so, there was this lingering unease of having been lost, and frightened and disoriented.
I think this is the perfect way to understand how I adapted to disability. I left the hospital in a wheelchair and I went into a world, the same one that I’d left but I went in the accessible door and all was changed. It took me a long time to find the markers, to recognized that feeling lost and being lost were not the same thing. It took me a while to realize that I was going to be going into the same world through different doors for a long time. But to realize that I would find markers along the way that told me that I was where I was supposed to be.
Up til that moment of being lost in a familiar place, I had forgotten about those early days of disability and of adaption and of feeling really lost. I still get lost, but not for long, because there are more markers now, markers that tell me that I’m where I’m supposed to be.
Yesterday, after speaking to a large group of people a man came up to me, with a grave look on his face, and handed me a piece of paper, folded up. I suppose I should have waited to read it but I didn’t, I opened it and there was a message for me, only a few words. I looked to him and smiled a thank you. It’s a little personal to tell you what the words were, but what they said rang in my heart.
They said, ‘you are where you are supposed to be.’
Disability or not, we all need to know that, every now and then.
Different doors, but same search, belonging, membership and markers of welcome.
