Why Me?: The Social-Psychological Conundrum of Disability
Why me? It is a question that every person deals with at some point in their life mostly in adolescence. Thoughts like "Why didn't I make the football team?" "Why did they have to break up with me? I thought we were going to last forever," Spoiler alert kid; you are fifteen and it is no longer 1949. They were probably no good for you anyways and you'll see that in due time. These are questions that go through everyone's head but the why me conundrum lays deep and has been ingrained in the disabled community for years and there's a multitude of reasons why that is we can break down using social science.
The first of these is quite simple but it bears mentioning and weighs heavy on the mind of a lot of people. This is the immutable fact that we operate in an able-bodied society where ableism runs rampant and it is hard for anyone different to get ahead. Before I move forward I'd be doing myself and my readers a disservice by not mentioning that this is not exclusively an ability problem as is shown in society today however my focus and expertise lay within the realm of disability so that is the lane we will stick in. Ableism like most forms of discrimination begins subtly and is the lovechild of fear and misunderstanding. Whereas some people overestimate someone's ability, others underestimate someone's ability and make it an awkward interaction.
We live in a society with people who have a sick fascination with "fixing" us as disabled people. This phenomenon is easily explained using a physiological phenomenon known as the "Good Do Feel Good phenomenon" This is the idea that the more acts of altruism one performs they are happier. The problem with this is that when you try to "fix" a disabled person you are doing two things the first is you are showing bias by saying that you don't fit in and I will be your personal Moses and lead you into the able-bodied world. The second thing that is happening is that you're being tone-deaf and not listening we don't to be fixed and fit into your screwed-up portrait of what you perceive as "normal". Whether you are aware of this or not you are wasting your time. We want to be accepted for what we can do instead of people trying to fix and teach us what we can't. This leads people with disabilities to wonder "Why can't I just be normal?"
The second reason is a bit more nuanced It is the idea of a person not being disabled enough. This tends to happen a lot in two specific disability communities the first is the deaf community and this is because looking at a person with hearing loss everything seems typical. The other is the Cerebral Palsy community and especially in people with cases of CP in which they have a gross motor classification (GMCs) of I or II the people with GMCs of I and II walk with little to no assistance and can feed themselves as well as dress and bathe themselves. As much as kids in this situation are told they are lucky they are often isolated because they don't have enough function to fully function in a fully able-bodied society but are forgotten about because they do not fit into the nice box that society has created for people with CP It forces them to ask "Why can't I at least be able to fit somewhere?". That box and image is the idea that we all should be tube feed drooling vegetables because we have a traumatic brain injury. To let you know just because someone is classified with a GMC of IV or V doesn't mean they are vegetables. Again as we come back to the idea of fear and misconceptions.
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