I'm Coming Out!

Welcome!

My goal for this blog is to be informative, confessional, proactive, inspirational and all together controversial. The life of the disabled is more than I could have imagined and a struggle like no other. It is only now that I am coming into a full awareness of what it means to be disabled. And since I am a writer...well...I decided to write about it.

With that preamble, it's time to throw the first curve ball:

I was born the son of a gay church organist; that is to say my father is gay, a church organist and I am his son. I don't want to suggest that the churches he's played at are gay (not that there is anything wrong with a gay church...in fact, that'd be damn cool!), or that the organ which my father played was gay...uh, although, actually, I guess some of the organs he played were gay -- wow, that's too far, isn't it? Yeah, OK, that's going too far...

The point is that my father is gay, and for the first 40 plus years of his life he lived in the closet, playing the part of a straight man. Like my father, I have lived the first 30 plus years of my life in the closet -- the disabled closet. I succeeded in creating the illusion that I was able-bodied, so much so that I pressed myself to do jobs, engage in activities which actually worsened my congenital problems. In future posts I will talk in detail about my disabilities and my past, current and future battles with life as a disabled person.

Some of what I write will fall in line with what current Western medicine suggests about disability. Most of what I write here will not be supportive of what America calls health care or support for my unique minority group. I want to see changes, necessary changes in this society towards the disabled. To that end, I hope to piss a lot of people off, including members of the disabled community. It's been my experience that change doesn't occur until people get really anger, and I've got plenty of anger.

I'll do my best to be funny, too. Cause let's face it, I love to laugh at pain and suffering. I'm sorry, I do. I'm not saying that pain and suffering are in themselves funny, neither is. What is funny is the anxiety people feel when confronting it. I hate pity--pity, as well as self-pity. They are an an insult to those of us who suffer with circumstances with which we never chose to live. I believe the best way to break through that wall of pitiful separation is humor. The disabled need to let the world know it's OK to laugh about the suffering and at the same time not laugh at those suffering with them. Once we can laugh at adversity, we will find true empathy for those who suffer with pain and limitation. When I learned to laugh at my own circumstances I was able to admit, at last, to the world that I am a disabled person.

So, without further ado, my story...