A Day for Everyone. Even Me.
It’s a day for many of us to celebrate what we have, while we still have it.
One needn’t be a therapist to know that Valentine’s Day isn’t a happy day for everybody, especially this year. There are couples who’re becoming sick of each other, and there are single people who’re sick of being single, but the pandemic has dealt a particularly brutal blow to people with disabilities, many of whom are thirty-year-olds or forty-year-olds who’ve never loved.
Not all disabilities make romantic love difficult to achieve, but some do. Having a disability is already an isolating experience. Not only am I the sole person in a power chair wherever I go, but I can’t use ridesharing. Using public transportation is too much of a pain in the ass for me to see it as anything other than a pipe dream.
I’m able to drive, but many of us can’t. Throw in the quarantine, and circumstances become a bit bleaker than usual. Still, Valentine’s Day is important to me because it’s a day to appreciate both the incredibly negative impact my disability has had on my love life and the work I’ve done to improve my situation.
When I was 15, I believed that, due to Becker’s muscular dystrophy, no one would ever fall in love with me, and adults told me that I was overreacting. Secretly, I believed these adults, and I hoped they were correct. Like any 15-year-old, I knew that everything would be better in college, and I would never have a problem, again. Of course, when I arrived at college, my unusual body and I remained invisible. As I aged out of my teens, I began to receive fewer pep talks from friends and family. My problem had metastasized from a cute, little insecurity to something with which people seemed much less comfortable because maybe I was right, after all.
I’m open to the idea that I may eventually find someone and age out of my belief, but changing my mind is difficult because I know other men with muscular dystrophy, and they can’t find partners, either. I knew a 26-year-old with Duchenne who died before he could hold someone’s hand. Where I come from, we call that dead-ass. Many of my friends have told me consistently that my belief is unreasonable, though I’ve been single for all 25 years of my life, and as young as I am, that’s definitely not normal.
I take one day out of the year to assert that there is at least a kernel of truth to my belief and to acknowledge my pain: I’m a heterosexual man who loves women, and unless I figure out how to get into a relationship, I’m going to feel like I’m missing out. On most days, I’m able to forget this. I work. I play video games. I go on YouTube. During those times, I pretend I’m asexual and aromantic, but on Valentine’s Day, I pause to think about how my disability and my appearance have informed my experiences. We men with muscular dystrophy aren’t alone because we’re bad, unconfident people who haven’t tried hard enough.
We’re alone because our disabilities make us less desirable. We need to work much harder than others to find a partner.
On dating sites, the matches we obtain every couple of months don’t respond to us. In real life, we meet countless people who ghost us when we feel like rejecting us wouldn’t have been that hard for them, or people make room for our wheelchairs by leaping out of the way when we’d rather talk to them. I don’t have a “confidence” problem or a “mindset” problem.
Believing that oneself is attractive is an unconfident person’s idea of being confident. True confidence is action in the face of innumerable rejections. I’m confident because with every swipe and every cold approach, I attempt to improve my life. I wear nice clothes. I joke about my disability. I answer questions about my disability. If I weren’t disabled, I wouldn’t need to try this hard.
A lot of the time, I feel like people don’t believe all of this is happening as I describe it. On Valentine’s Day, that doesn’t matter because it’s a day for me to believe myself. I’ll grab a box of tissues, a party-size bag of Doritos, and another box of tissues ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°), and I’ll say to myself, “I’m correct. I’m trying really hard. This is happening exactly in the way I believe it’s happening, and it sucks.”
Most of my friends happen to be in relationships. While I plan on mourning my own situation, I’ll wish them the best on Valentine’s Day because it’s a good day for all of us. It’s a day for many of us to celebrate what we have, and it’s a day for some of us to reflect on how far we’ve come by ourselves. Being alone for 25 years has probably granted me a lot more strength than receiving support along the way.
I both received my computer science degree and built a video game without a shoulder to cry on. I was miserable the whole time, and I’m behind other people my age, but I’m glad that I haven’t given up, yet. Maybe 10 years from now, I’ll meet somebody who doesn’t care about the whole wheelchair thing.
Whether you’re a 21-year-old with an engagement ring around your finger or a 50-year-old virgin, I hope you have a thoughtful and restful Valentine’s Day that doesn’t totally suck.
