Your obsession with my willingness to overcome challenge leaves me feeling 
like a failure

Your words have power the way you use them 
hurts me 

 Overcoming my disability
has never been an option

it is a part of me and I have had twenty-two years to “come to terms” with it but you…
you will never know what it is like to live inside my body,
 to see through my eyes 

and I will be damned before I let your expectations of me decide
 how good a life I deserve..

I am human before anything else

I do not live to serve your sick need for twisted, 
stories 
of the misery/the tragedies of human life…

Disabled is your term
it is not mine..

there is nothing that I can not achieve except for those things which your society has created as obstacles to put me and my kind down

 so that you
 as someone who is healthy 
might never have to acknowledge us as your own 
because to you I am not human..

I would rather you said this to my face
but you won’t 

I would rather you called me a cripple

a retard
a lame
stupid
piece of shit
no good
lazy
useless
broken
boring
lifeless
worthless
better off dead
than to have you treat me like I might break at your touch

to have you shun me from receiving the same opportunities as you 

to have you bitch at your friend while I am in the room that my “benefits” 
are hand outs
That I am 

handicappable
special needs
different
broken
disabled

the only thing that needs“Overcoming”
is a circumstance that YOU
 have placed on me..

My illness has never lied to me.. 
My illness has never called me names
My illness has never judged me 
my body
my life 
My illness has never shielded its children from me
My illness has never treated me like less…

but you have.