I need to find a way to accept my limitations
Here is one of the best compliments I have ever received: “I don’t think of you as disabled.”
Not to humble brag, but I’ve heard it a lot over the years. Playing sports at a relatively high level as a kid and into high school, then competing as a recreational endurance athlete the last 20 years, I’ve more than held my own against the ablebodied.
Nobody thinks they are losing to a disabled person when I’m kicking their ass.
Similarly, I don’t blame my physical limitations when I lose or fall behind.
Getting beat is part of competition and I’ve learned to, if not accept it, then understand that’s a valuable, supremely motivating part of the process. There will always be someone stronger, faster and better and it’s up to me to close that gap the best I can.
But the hard truth of it is that I have physical limitations.
I was born with partial paralysis on the right side of my body and it impacts muscle development and control in my hand, arm and leg. I can wink with my left eye, but not my right. I type with only my left hand. My walk (and run) has a little hitch in it.
Because I was born this way, adaptation has always been part of my everyday life.
Learning how to swing a bat or a golf club, ride a bike, carry food up and down stairs — everything most able-bodied people do without a second thought — has required me to figure out a workaround. An absolute refusal to accept my body’s limitations has played a big part of it.
And while there are some things I just can’t do — never going to be a great juggler, for example — it’s the things I think I should be able to do, but can’t, that frustrate me.
A recent example was a winter bike ride in snowy conditions that required more strength and control than I could provide the bike. So I struggled while my friends — people I normally have no trouble keeping up with — rode off into the distance.
I was enraged. At the conditions, at my bike and at my friends — who, it should be said, were doing absolutely nothing wrong except having a good time when I was not.
They waited, offered encouragement and words of support, which made me even more mad.
Sympathy and help is the last thing I want, ever.
Eventually, I just left in a way that made them feel bad. It wasn’t my finest moment.
I need to find a way to accept my limitations, particularly as I age, without diminishing the spirit and determination that has been so valuable, spilling over into my approach to life as well.
Maybe “I don’t think of you as disabled” isn’t the compliment I think it is.
Perhaps allowing others to recognize my limitations and my efforts to overcome them would allow me to do so as well.