Handicapable?

Anyone who knows me well, knows I'm rarely politically correct when it comes to speaking about my disabilities.  I call myself handicap, one-legger, cappy, cripple, etc., and it is really not offensive to me because I am all of those things.  When I use my disability parking pass in my car, I call it a cappy sticker.  When I decide it's time get up and start laundry or wash dishes and my cat jumps up to sit on my lap, I call that caticapped, or peticapped because I'm trapped and can't move when there is a warm cuddly animal sitting on my lap.     

I lost my leg five years ago in a car accident, but I was born with a birth defect; I've walked funny and looked different my whole life.  I was teased, bullied, and tormented as a child and back then there were no campaigns to raise awareness about the dangers of being bullied, and there weren't shows like Glee trying to show that in the "real" world all kinds of people are accepted, even the "handicapable" people, and yet somehow I survived! ( I understand shows like Glee are dramatizing these situations to create acceptance and awareness, but is it working?)

I have to admit, I do take offense to people who use words like  "handicapable":  Let's face it, these words were not invented to make disabled people feel better, and I don't appreciate people minimizing the difficulties I have to go through; I do have a few extra hurdles to jump through to get to the same place as people who don't have as many physical disabilities as I have.  I don't like to compare obstacles between other people, but at the same time, I have enough common sense to know when someone is worse off than I, or the other way around.

We're not all the same going through the same trials in life, so stop comparing, stop trying to make differences look like similarities, stop minimizing what I'm going through because someone says it's acceptable to them, and please don't show me another article of the next great amputee who went to the Olympics and expect me to be inspired by that.  My leg hurts, I'm tired, and I need to sit down. 

 
  

Thank you.

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