Last year it was 20 years since I left high school. While there was a reunion I had no intention of going. Even if some of my favourite girls contacted me prior to it saying they were still single and wanted to see me I doubt I’d have gone.
Put it this way someday I plan to write a book and I already know the chapter on high school will be called hell on earth. No matter how many times I have said I hated it, no one has ever truly believed me.
I did have some amazing experiences and friendships during high school, that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that what I remember most is that everything was a battle.
I was forced to do subjects that were impractical meaning they were pointless. Science arguably the best example of this. Being expected to write a report on an experiment I could not possibly do remains one of the greatest mysteries of my life. Then again I also did physical education for too long because it was compulsory.
The most challenging part though was the countless meetings my parents and I attended. There were discussions about access issues, my less than impressive report cards and my subject choices were continually scrutinised.
A lot of this had to do with the inflexibility of the education department. I am still haunted by the fact that in year 12 the Maths and English exams were on the same day. Add in the extra time I was allocated and I was at school similar hours of someone in full time employment. I think this is a horrible situation for anyone but for people with disability it’s too much.
I didn’t have the capacity to understand it all then but I see now that in high school I was ostracised. I definitely feel my teenage years were taken from me. It is incredibly difficult to hear people talk about wagging, drinking, smoking and chasing girls in high school. The memories of having fun from that period of my life are very few.
And while my VCE results got me to university, I let more tears out about them than anything else. I think regrets are stupid, I just felt my score didn’t reflect what I had done in the year. It was a demoralising end to a dark part of my life. The scars from feeling guilty for wanting what most other people my age wanted will always be with me. Mostly because while we are taught the harder you work, the luckier you get this is difficult to comprehend. For people with disability the effort that is put in, generally isn’t worth the reward.
Yet for all the depression I went through I am grateful. At 18, while I didn’t know it all, I felt I knew my life would be excruciatingly unfair reasonably often. This meant I needed to be more determined and patient than most.
The real positives to come out of high school is that my love of heavy metal, wrestling and comics will last forever. My interests balance out the medical appointments and various other boring tasks that come with having disability.
It’s also propelled me to continually encourage people with disability and their families to strive for more. Knowing that I have missed out has proved to be incredibly valuable. Through this I have learnt to appreciate life and I seem to do this better than most. And while generally my focus is for people with disability to improve their lives, I am finding that able bodied people need help with this too. I am often in disbelief at what can consume a person’s thoughts. An average meal or an insincere text message can make people want to give up. Seriously if these are the biggest issues in your life, you are doing well.
The negatives from high school is I can feel the exact opposite. I wish there was research into the psychological impact accepting less has on people with disability. I have been explaining what I’m going through to get my new wheelchair and people are disgusted. And eventually it gets to why don’t I do something about it? Of course this is where sadly I point out that I’m working with the best people available and I have no other choice. To me this is the greatest challenge for everyone associated with disability. How do you improve your life when you have little to no concept of what better is? To add to the frustration the disability sector are largely responsible for this as they continue to support mediocre at best services. The sector’s inability to recognise this is in my opinion the biggest reason people with disability struggle in life.
And this is why I am writing a series of blogs about the NDIS. My high school experience is not the worst thing you will read about disability but that’s not the point. The point is that people with disability have been treated extremely poorly by services we were supposed to be able to trust. The NDIS continues on unaware of this. That’s disheartening when once again we were told it was going to be different.
Unfortunately mostly I hear about inexperienced planners with minimal understanding of disability and that the NDIS is another process full of barriers. Bizarrely though this keeps me motivated. I might not change anything but I can demonstrate we’ve had enough experience of that in our lifetime. After all it’s disappointing that society is not more aware of this.
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