Discovering (and Embracing) my Awesomeness

I've had an epiphany over the past several weeks I've been in DC. I'm a pretty awesome human being. That may sound like the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard, but for someone who has spent most of her life greatly disliking herself, it is actually a really amazing experience. I am so grateful for the awesome friends I've made here who have helped me come to view myself in a totally new way. I'm grateful that I'm learning to frame things in a different way. I am awesome. I have so many things to offer the world. I am not the sum of what I cannot do. I am not a problem. I am not a burden. I am not a mistake. I didn't always feel this way, though.

For most of my life, whether the people around me saw it or not, I have felt anything but awesome. I deeply struggled with internalized ableism , and I believed that what I could not do made me a problem. I believed that I was more trouble than I was worth. Deep down in my heart I believed that if my parents could have chosen their kid, they never in a million years would have chosen me. I was complicated. People stared at me as I wheeled down the street. People made ignorant and sometimes even purposely hurtful comments, and I believed them. Despite my mother's deep commitment to advocacy, I found myself unwilling or unable to fully accept my disability. I hated it, and because of that, I hated me. I struggled to accept my body that did not look like society thought it should, nor function in a way that would allow me to be deemed normal or acceptable. I was angry. I was frustrated. And for the most part I was alone.

Despite the fact that I had a lot of great friends who I love, I felt deeply alone in my experience. I didn't know how to talk about it, and my deeply rooted internalized ableism made me feel like they were only my friends because they felt sorry for me. I didn't feel awesome, I felt pathetic. I felt like a charity case. I felt like an outsider. I felt that way for a really long time, sometimes without even realizing it.

The self-hatred, the self-doubt, and the ridiculous insecurities kept growing, and I must admit they're  still not completely gone, but were getting there, there's been a lot of progress, and I'm grateful for that. Being here, sharing my experiences, meeting all the awesome people I have met, and finding my passion has changed me. I do things, and I really believe that I am good at them, there is no doubt. For the first time in my life, I am so ridiculously proud to be who I am, I wouldn't change it for anything.

The other night, I was wheeling with my friends back to our dorm, and I told my one friend how meeting them, and being here has made me really believe that I am awesome. We laughed about it. She said it was true. And I believed her. I didn't think she was lying to me. I didn't doubt it. Now I don't look at my experiences and feel shame, not at all, I feel pride.

I am the person that I am because of everything that I've experienced. I want the things that I want because of the life I have lived. Over the past few weeks, I have come to realize without a shadow of a doubt that my disability is a huge part of who I am, it is so much of what makes me awesome, and none of what takes away from it. I am not ashamed to be who I am, because who I am is pretty great. I'm cool with it; it's just the rest of the world that needs to catch up. Embrace your awesomeness; it makes life so much more fun!