Let’s stop pretending disability is some inspirational plot twist.
It’s not a lesson.
It’s not a blessing.
It’s not the universe “redirecting” me toward my higher purpose.
It’s a word I hated.
It was a death.
A real one.
The kind nobody sends flowers for because the body is still upright and breathing,
so everyone assumes the life inside it must still be intact.
I remember the exact moment the old life slipped out of me.
No drama.
No collapse.
Just a limit I couldn’t push through,
a door that wouldn’t open,
a quiet, brutal no from a body that used to say yes without negotiation.
Then the losses came like invoices:
non‑negotiable, due immediately,
each one demanding a part of me I didn’t have anymore.
Strength.
Ease.
Certainty.
The casual luxury of not thinking about pain before I moved.
People said, “You’re still you,”
as if that was supposed to comfort me.
As if the man I used to be wasn’t lying in the wreckage behind me,
already cold.
They wanted me to be grateful.
Grateful for survival.
Grateful for resilience.
Grateful for the chance to “grow.”
Let me be clear:
I didn’t grow.
I adapted because I had no choice.
I rebuilt because no one else was going to.
I kept going because stopping wasn’t on the menu.
Some things never came back.
Some futures stayed dead.
Some rooms in me went dark and stayed that way.
I’m not here to inspire anyone.
I’m not here to make disability palatable.
I’m not here to reassure the world that everything is fine.
Everything is not fine.
But I’m still here.
And the hardest part is knowing I had to survive the death of a life no one else bothered to mourn.
© 2026 Jaime Pearson.
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