I was born with Spina Bifida. As a result, I am paralyzed from my knees down and I use a wheelchair full time. Growing up, and even now, in my early 40s, I have come to realize that many in society deem the disability community as asexual, or unable to have sexual relationships or any form of intimacy. Because of this, there are also many within the disability community that feel this way about themselves… or they are ashamed to be seen as sexual or sexy.
I can still remember the first time I had “the talk” with mom. It was actually a forced situation. I was about 9 years old and we were at one of my Spina Bifida clinics that I attended every 6 months. It was right around the time that I was learning to catheterize, and one of the nurses asked mom if she had talked to me about sex, menstrual cycles and all of the related topics. In the nurse’s eyes, it was the perfect time since I was learning about my ‘nether region’ to get this catheterizing thing down pat. Mom, however, was taken aback. The nurse said, “You do realize that your daughter can have sex, don’t you?!” Mom wasn’t actually disputing that. Her only reply was that I was too young for either of us to think about that. Like I said, I was about 9 at the time and this was in the early 1980s. I was the youngest child of 3 – the only girl - and mom was divorced, taking care of all of us. To say she was protective of me is an understatement. Still, we went home and had “the talk” later that day. It was brutal, as you can imagine. Remember YOUR first sex talk?
As a kid, I never actually thought about it. I just knew that I would grow up and have lots of boyfriends, eventually get married, and someday have kids. Just like all of my friends thought of themselves. It wasn’t until junior high that I began to realize that may not happen. I had PLENTY of friends… male and female. But no one was asking me out on dates. My only conclusion was that it was because of my disability. Even back then, people would ask me if I could have kids “the natural way” and when I said yes, they were shocked. I was becoming aware that people didn’t see me that way. Today, I’m 42 and I still get those questions and the shocked looks when I reply that I can.
I was 18 before I got my first boyfriend. We met my senior year of high school. And no, he does not have any disabilities. That seems to be a common misconception too…that we only date within our community. He was the person I lost my virginity to and we are married today. I was so incredibly shy about dating and guys when he finally came around. It took meeting him and falling in love with him for me to grasp that I can be a sexual person and not “asexual”. That I can be sexy---if only in his eyes. He broke me out of the shell that society had put me into so many years ago.
Admittedly, it’s a shell that I work hard to stay out of. When I fall back into the trappings that society seems comfortable putting me in, he’s right there by my side reminding me that I am my own person and I can do whatever I want with my body, even if it makes others uncomfortable.
