Here I sit.

Living with a severe disability is really not that bad, that is, as long as things are going well. But this past weekend I ran into a situation that made me stare directly at the sometime cruel and harsh reality of my disability. Even though it wasn’t a life-threatening, dangerous or unhealthy situation, it brought to the forefront just how vulnerable I can be.

Saturday evening my wheelchair started acting up. Sometimes my chair would have power, other times it wouldn’t move. All I could do is pray that it would get me through the weekend so that on Monday I might be able to get it fixed, or at least looked at. What was wrong was beyond the ability for someone without specific training to fix.

Sunday morning I woke up to discover that my chair wouldn’t move; not even budge. Nothing I did would rectify the situation. So I was left to the mercy of those living with me to push me manually to wherever I needed to go within the house.

Unfortunately both of the people who live with me were busy all day Sunday. So I had to choose a spot in the house and I felt would be the best for me to sit for potentially the rest of the day. My choice was in my front office next to the phone where, if needed, I could at least access the outside world.

So there I sat, literally unable to move, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. when one of the individuals I live with returned from work. By then, considering I had just spent the last eight hours staring at the photographs that hang on the wall in front of where I was sitting, I wasn’t in the best of moods. It was a true test of my patience, to say the least.

Yes, sometimes living with the disability can be a real pain in the ass.