Let’s Say…

Let’s say, recently, interested men-folk express their said-interest in you by pointing out all that they are willing to accept. And, let’s say, their acceptance, which is tolerance in disguise, shapes into a short list and on this list is the life you’ve curated, including your four Newfoundlands, your adult disabled son, and your own “limited” self. Let’s say, none of these men have met you IRL, but they do DM, and DM frequently and yes, they are kind enough and most likely good men. In their messages they recant their willingness to “step up” and “partner up” with you despite your medical “challenges” or “issues” or “liabilities.”

We can say that your medical challenges/issues/liabilities are not

Medical

Challenges

Issues

or … Liabilities.

Because, let’s say, you, like your adult son, are disabled. Magnificently and beautifully disabled.

Let’s say, through the struggle, out of destruction, you realize that you’ve never really accepted disability. We know this is not denial. We know how much your first-born, now-adult (“disabled”) son has taught you. Perhaps what others label as disabled is instead, your superpower.

Or, let’s say, you have an understanding that

every single one of us

carries “disability.”

Some of us are financially disabled. In our current culture, many of us are demographically disabled. Others are educationally or emotionally disabled. Let’s say we are all working WITH something, against another something, and sorting through yet one more something.

And let’s say, because of your childhood sexual trauma, your military stressors, your DV marriage, and your brave mamma-bear single parenting stint, you’ve learned to not display your weaknesses, mainly to avoid the pouncing of predators.

Say it’s taken years to muster your new level of courage and release the shame that society has planted on you for overcoming…

for surviving….

for falling down…

for getting back up.

And, let’s say, now you’re comfortable and madly in love with who you’ve become. And say, in this space of love you begin to openly share on social media these tiny windows into your challenges. You share these glimpses and pieces of your authentic life with the hope that others will also be unashamed. Let’s say you also hope to create awareness. Or let’s say, you’re just trying to stay your course

only to have a handful of men, let’s say seven, give or take, reach out to you and remind you

that you, “limited” and “issued” you, might be tolerated by them.

Let’s say, instead, they remind you that your work has just begun.

And let’s also say that these men, they are your brothers, and like your other brothers (birth brothers, found brothers, brothers-by-choice, brothers-in-arms), you love these men. You love them though their judgement annoys. Let’s say, you are well aware that someone, somewhere, at this very moment, is sitting with deep annoyance of you as well.

And let’s say you welcome this annoyance so long as they lose the labels and you hope, at the top of their disgruntlement circling around you, you hope they find a way in, into their own heart. And in their finding, they realize that they too are super-powered and deeply lovable.

Let’s say.