A few months after Mabel's 16th birthday, her parents died in a tragic accident and now a blind Mabel was a ward of Aunty Kay. In her absence, Mabel would fall prey to her cousins' incessant bullying and tricks. One day, they had put peanut butter in Mabel's favourite sneakers. A fuming Mabel rushed into Troy's room and delivered a stinging slap with the one sneaker in hand to his face. I told you she was a blind psychopath Troy shouted. Sensing Mabel's distress, the guy introduced himself as Leo but an embarrassed Mabel scurried away. For the next few months, whenever Troy had his friends over, Leo and Mabel would secretly meet in the kitchen. He was 18, fascinated with cars and her first crush. Reality rudely intruded on their secret meeting spot by Troy whose shouts brought his sisters rushing in. An angry Adele, who was liked Leo viciously slapped Mabel d as she let loose angry words and barbs at Mabel's ploys. Mabel, immensely hurt rushed to the safety of her small room. After what seemed like hours, the door creaked open and Leo called out. Mabel flung her pillow at him and told him to go. Leo persisted and pressed a soft kiss to her lips telling her that she was a breath of fresh air in this hell-hole. He continued to caress her neck and shoulders. Kisses turned heated, caresses became more frantic and clothes discarded as Mabel's heart and innocence were offered up and consumed in the lusty atmosphere. In the dawn, after kissing a clinging Mabel, Leo left. Mabel blurted out her love when her cousins barged into her room unannounced. Troy and Adele laughed as they boasted of the bet Leo was a part of or else he would never look at a blind nerd. In the coming weeks, Leo was MIA! One Saturday after dinner, Mabel overheard Aunty Kay on the phone talking about the Johns moving to another state. This hurt Mabel to the quick who vouched to never fall for such a ploy! In the 5 years since that fateful day, Mabel blossomed into an intelligent, caring and capable young woman. Despite her disability, she successfully pursued her passion of cooking with the upcoming release of her first cookbook. That heart wrenching summer with Leo was pivotal for Mabel. Lost in her happy thoughts, she nearly missed her beeping phone signalling that her publicist and best friend, Maria had arrived to give her a lift to the venue but then encountered a slowly deflating tire. Luckily, the service guy Zack, was nearby to pick up the call. With both ladies safely ensconced in the truck, and their vehicle in tow, they made their way to the garage. Mabel smiled as she overheard Maria flirting with Zack. Before long, they arrived at the garage. The door creaked open signalling someone's entrance. After a shuffling of papers, a masculine voice called out Maria's name. Mabel froze in disbelief as her friend went about her business. She could never forget that husky baritone. It was LEO! As Maria concluded her paperwork and payments she hollered to Mabel which grabbed Leo's eagle gaze. The air was tight with tension as Leo stumbled over Mabel's name. As Mabel hurriedly nudged her friend to go ahead, a strong, calloused hand grabbed Mabel's wrist. Mabel was having not of that and delivered a stinging slap to an unshaven but hewn jaw. She was overwhelmed by repressed hurt. Maria tried to calm the situation down with the ladies hurriedly escaping after a few attempts. Zack met a stunned Leo standing in the same position, weary lines on his face. After some consideration, he held up a business card with a naughty smirk. Mabel refused to talk on her way back to the hotel but lying in bed that night, her memories came to the forefront. After a sleepless night she called Maria to confirm her schedule. A barrage of questions of Mabel's well-being were fired by Maria, which Mabel answered quietly. Seven o' clock sharp, the doorbell rang with a sombre trip to the restaurant. When the meals arrived, a frizzle of awareness ran up Mabel's spine. A voice which haunted her dreams announced Leo's presence. Crossing her hands across her chest, Mabel sat back without a word. As soon as Leo broached the topic of the first time they had made love, Mabel lost it and flung her plate of spaghetti at him. He made light of the attack and pleaded that he was threatened by Adele the morning after their sweet night. She had maliciously filmed them entwined asleep and would share a copy with the entire school. He had stayed away to protect Mabel's reputation. Troy had lied to the Coach which got him kicked off the team. His dad had gotten a job transfer out of state which was a clean break. Leo continuously professed his love whilst raining kisses along Mabel's face, hands and wrists. She softly returned her love enveloped in those strong arms that were imprinted in her memory forever and a day.

The Covid-19 pandemic that has swept through America has been quite a confusing experience, filled with a series of mixed emotions. It has been a period of time where I've been able to truly reflect on myself and my life— not because I never had the time, but rather because of everyone else's reactions to total isolation compared to my own. I am fortunate enough to say that my experience with this pandemic has been relatively okay, especially in terms of my education, compared to the experiences of those who I've talked to. For those that I know, their plight has not revolved around the virus going about, but rather the education system and its response to the national disaster. They are crushed under the weight of ginormous assignments with cutthroat deadlines; drowning in stormy seas of unusually terrible grades, circulating disappointment from their families and hardships at home, and merciless teachers who— despite their roles as guides for their students' futures— sneer at them for not being able to “do their jobs.” Their mental health withers by the mere second. Much of these people are mentally disabled. They'd rather be dead than continue their education under these circumstances. Oftentimes I find myself wishing to switch places with them, just to give them a bit of peace. Unlike my disabled peers, my plight comes from coping with the effects of this world's ableism while being in the pandemic. I am autistic. I was unaware of this fact for most of my life, and I did not get an official diagnosis until earlier this school year. I grew up in a neighborhood that had an extremely poor reception of my existence, and so I was ostracized, undermined and bullied by most of my classmates as well as my teachers. With that being said, I had become more comfortable within the walls of my own home rather than the outdoors where many children played. I never understood why the world seemed to be so against me, I had simply thought I was born unlucky. And so the norm for me became sitting alone on my bed, chatting with online friends who shared similar hardships of my own, completing my daily tasks, and then going to sleep. Every day was the same, and yet I never complained despite how obsolete my living situation was. I thought it was better than daring to ever step outside the lines where I was guaranteed safety. I never felt that lonely until the pandemic came around the corner in March, and everyone was on the internet complaining about a living situation they were forced into— one that I had long grown accustomed to since I was a little kid. It wasn't until then that I realized just how much of the lived experience had been taken away from me. Yet I still didn't understand why it was all happening, and I continued to not understand until I got my diagnosis in October. It was later that month that I was given the grace of being able to finally meet some of my online friends, who were either autistic as well or simply just accepting. It felt like I was able to breathe in fresh air for the first time I had been alive. I didn't feel chained to a specific way that I should act. I could move my limbs however I desired, I could speak in a way that was authentic to me, I could rest my eyes wherever was comfortable without being reminded of social “rules.” I was free to stim in any way my mind and body guided me to. I was free. For the first time in my life I felt free, and I mourned heavily that night when I had to go back to my daily life, confined to the bars of my room where I felt like I'd rot away. I was given a smidgen of freedom before being locked away again. My heart continues to yearn for just another taste, under the forced isolation and quarantine from the plaguing virus.

Eight days after my twentieth birthday, I'm rushed to the Emergency Room. Again. Twelve times in the last year and a half. The pain is so bad I can't pick myself up from the tiled bathroom floor, sweating, nauseous and sick to my stomach. “We're sorry, Ms. Ludemann, but we can't give you any painkillers -- have you tried ibuprofen?” I see a news segment about a man who took so much Advil that he burned a hole in his liver, and wonder if burning a hole in mine would convince people that I'm sick. I cycle between passing out and dissociating on my partner's worn couch. The EMTs who arrive in the ambulance joke that I can't be that bad. The (white, old, male) doctor asks me if I have any “mental health issues,” then tells me I am a woman and I simply have anxiety, manifesting itself in physical forms. IVs, EEGs, EKGs, MRIs, CAT scans. I am drowning in alphabet soup, but no one has an explanation for the ache in my bones, the snapping sounds my hips make, the popping of my subluxed shoulders slipping back into place. In November, I drive to a nearby medical supply store. The last few hundred dollars in my bank account are forked over for the only semblance of freedom I have had in weeks. The seat is too wide for my hips. The plastic armrests leave black and blue bruises on my arms for a month. My friends pick up a roll of cat printed duct tape at CVS, and we spend the evening carefully aligning strips on the side rails. It becomes my “pussywagon,” a humorous extension of myself in an attempt to conceal the bruises all over, the muscle spasms that rack my body, the tears shed as I struggle to literally crawl up the stairs to my inaccessible, second-floor dorm room. I soon learn that my college is built on hills, and try to ignore the pain in my shoulders as I push myself across campus and back. In December, I set up a GoFundMe, staring blankly at my computer screen at the hundreds of other fundraising campaigns set up by people like me who need money to cover the cost of surviving, which is its own pre-existing condition. We raise $400, and I have a break down in bed thinking about ways to make up the extra two thousand we need. My grandmother, whose own joint issues lead to a botched knee surgery and a large legal settlement, loans me the money, if only because we call each other and commiserate over the weather and the pain in our elderly bones. The chair I choose is bubblegum pink, bright enough that I can be spotted crossing the dark streets on campus at night. I name her Veronica and cover the sides in stickers and figure out hacks for attaching my backpack to her pushbar. They move me to a new dorm, where I don't have to humiliate myself crawling to my room. I spend January through April zooming across campus, waiting impatiently for the crowded elevator in academic buildings, calling facility services multiple times imploring them to shovel the wheelchair ramp and make pathways bigger than a foot wide. My partner and I trudge through the mud and muck of Pride in May, dodging puddles and shivering under sweaty plastic ponchos. When we roll over to compliment a group of fellow queer wheelchair users on their sign, which calls out the inaccessibility of having the parade terminate at the fairgrounds, they smile and ask, “Do you have Ehlers-Danlos too?” For the next hour, I learn that other people have the same pain I do, that the “party trick” I've had for years is really my elbow dislocating, that the dizzy spells and night sweats I get have a name, that my symptoms are real. I bury my head in my laptop for a weekend straight, digging up any and all information I can find. My parents tell me that researching too much is making me a hypochondriac. Two days before my senior year, my mother, Veronica and I fold ourselves into my small car and make the drive from our house to the only doctor within a fifty mile radius knowledgeable about Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Two white-coat wearing, tight-lipped doctors poke and prod at my body for an hour, making me bend this way and that way, asking my mother questions about my birth, looking at my teeth, taking samples of my blood. They tell me that I don't score high enough on the Beighton scale to have Ehlers-Danlos, but I might have Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder, the big umbrella under which EDS falls. I nod and smile blankly, knowing that the entire ride home I will have to listen to my mother prattle on about how she was right, that I was convincing myself I was sicker than I am. Two days before the start of my senior year, I sit in my living room, surrounded by suitcases and boxes. My sister fills her backpack with binders and books; I fill mine with meds, my foldable cane, KT tape to hold my joints in place, a heating pad, bottles of melatonin to force my body to sleep on nights when the pain keeps me awake. On move in-day, I sit in my dorm room and take a deep breath, processing my new suroundings. Then the typing begins.

The world is a careful orchestration of facts and logics that lay onto each other to give varied results. Choices are invariably between few options, like video simulations, that pile onto each other to result in vastly different outcomes. The law of multiplication in its grandest application. Successful is he who can decipher these truths of the world to come up with his own. As a woman of logic, it baffles me, thus, how individuals can blatantly turn an eye away from the facts that stare them in the face. Certain advocates for equality like to harp on the premise that all humans are the same, a concept that I never understood. The very aspects that make us human differentiate us. From our genetic code which dictates our physical capacities to our appearance which segregates us on a visual level to our individual psyches that transcends measurable scales, humans are literally programmed to stand out. Which is why it is ignorant to assume that all of us are cut of the same cloth and fit into the same mould. However, an admittance of dissimilarity is not a translation to advocacy for injustice. There is a difference between seeing individuality and condemning others for it. These unwritten divides that segregate us into subgroups within a larger population are not the reason for the animosity that certain individuals feel. These malicious thoughts are viruses concealed in promising packets of healthy cells which cross the barriers within our heads to infect what lies beyond, to decay our minds. These trojan horses of malevolence implant themselves into our psyche without our knowledge, they start an unalterable process of gradual decline of our thoughts and of our perspectives. They turn dissimilar people into ‘them' who are deprived of the treatment and amenities that ‘we' should receive. Early interactions with non-neurotypical individuals normalised the concept to me that certain people have quirks or habits that may not resemble my own. The brain is akin to an ocean, it is uncharted territory that is not completely understood by individuals and hides secrets that are yet to be uncovered. It is unjust to box this super-machine with infinite capability into identical, restrictive containers. The world is filled with unique individuals and while we may have come a long way in the acceptance of individuals with varied physical appearances, we have yet to accept those who different from us neurologically. A moment that sticks with me took place when I was in ninth grade. The toll of the bell had indicated that we were free to go to the cafeteria to grab something to eat. On the food counter was a boy with autism who was working the counter to gain work experience. Unlike my usual, unsocial self I decided to strike up a conversation with him. Once I returned to my unofficially designated seat, I was bombarded with questions about my interaction with him by a friend of mine. This friend expressed her disbelief at my conversation, her primary question was 'why would I want to talk to him?'. This friend was considered social and accepting of all people, she was even working with students with autism for a project, which is why it shocked me to see her react this way, to take this fellow human as an alien creature who we could share no connection with. I came to the conclusion that dissimilarity scares us- the creatures of conformity. We very easily discard those who don't conform to our idea of normalcy. These preconceived notions make people tag non-neurotypical individuals as mentally deranged r dumb. This bubbling cauldron of emotions triggered me to work towards the acceptance of non-neurotypical individuals so that some day the need to ask the question that my friend had does not arise.

In my naivety, I believed that I had complete control over every aspect of my life; I had my dreams and aspirations just within my grasp. I've heard time and time again that things can change in the blink of an eye, but I never imagined I'd experience it quite so literally. On July 1, 2016, I had awoken after a fairly normal night of sleep with a tingling, burning sensation throughout my arms and neck. I got out of bed and brought my complaints to my mom, which she shrugged off, suggesting that I had slept in an odd position. I agreed and decided to go downstairs and pay my brother a visit; but he was still asleep and I didn't want to bother him. The condition of my arms continued, so I laid on the nearby couch hoping that I would soon feel better. In a matter of twenty minutes, my body began to shut down. I lost the ability to move my arms and legs and breathing became increasingly difficult. While laying in the ambulance, I watched my house grow smaller in the distance and I knew my life would never be the same.In the days that followed, I was diagnosed with a spinal cord injury that had resulted in paralysis from the neck down; and unfortunately, I remain in the same condition today. At the time of the injury, I was 18 years old, freshly graduated from high school, and excited about starting college. In today's world, limitations are just a part of everyday life. While some like myself, are affected physically, others are affected in a plethora of ways. When plans are disturbed by an unforeseen obstacle, there are usually two choices—fight or flight. I realized I could give up my aspirations and dreams, or I could accept the situation and adapt. Albert Einstein said, “Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.” Through this long process, I've recognized that success is just a matter of my desire to push through boundaries and achieve goals. In addition to my physical limitations, one challenge I've also been dealing with depression. While left to my own thoughts, finding out that I was immobile made me feel less than human. I truly believed that I had no value and my future was in a bed; I soon realized the only thing that confined me was my mindset. I have a newfound respect for my upbringing. In my darkness, I had forgotten what hope was. However, I believe growing up in a religious household gave me something to grasp in my trials and tribulations--my faith. Along with depression, my anxiety became unbearable. I dreaded visits from friends and being out in public wasn't an option for me. I wasn't comfortable with people staring and getting around was stressful, especially trying to fit behind tables and through doorways. Individuals with disabilities are less likely to feel normal in today's society. Even still; I do my best to stay positive and do things that I enjoy so I don't focus on the difficult parts of my situation. As long as I can remember, I have used my sense of humor to cope. Dealing with my disability made it hard for me to remember what being happy was like. Through the of support from my large family, I learned how to laugh again. As a resident in the state of Georgia, my family and I have faced numerous issues with nursing agencies. For instance, trying to find stable help with personalities that blended with my family. We had often been left without care but our church community and friends have helped tremendously to fill this space of “need” and assist my mother in taking care of me. Through the unpredictable nature of my medical care, I had to learn to be my own advocate. Constantly relying on people caused me to believe that I didn't have a choice in anything. I was never a confrontational person and in many cases, I let others take advantage of me. Eventually I found solace in the fact that I have a say in my body, my care, and my feelings take priority. I confronted my fears and stood up for my beliefs. I regained power through my words. I found a voice that I thought was gone. Anxiety and depression isn't something that should be faced alone, so I want to dedicate my time to helping others who felt the same way I did. I am extremely passionate about furthering my education and giving others a sense of hope and belonging. That being said, I would love to be a psychologist who specializes in working with people with disabilities. Having experienced these difficulties myself, I might better empathize with them than others would. A disability might seem like a setback to some, but in my opinion it is a reflection of whether a person has the strength, resilience and will to persevere through their circumstances. I'm persistent and unwilling to accept anything less than success. Giving up is not an option. Despite all of the hardships I endure and continue to endure, I refuse to accept that having a disability stops one from living a fulfilling life and I know I'm on my own path to making my dreams a reality.