I remember exactly the day I truly became aware of my handicap. I was in the schoolyard when a girl pushed me down among the scattered backpacks to see if I could get up on my own. Everyone was watching. I was flooded with shame. In that instant, my identity—my deepest self—took a blow.
As a child, I had thought of my handicap as simply one difference among others, hard though it was to bear: I just couldn't do this or that. But in that moment, I began to grasp fully that I was not like the others.
Three blows at once: I was the handicapped person—why? I felt utterly alone with this suffering—why? And it would last my whole life—WHY?
That painful incident only awakened a hidden, spreading unease. At that time, I denied completely what was happening to my body. I couldn't look in a mirror. I was ashamed of that image, so far from the beauty the world held up as the standard. Like many adolescents, I saw everything in extremes: either brilliant or black. "I limp, therefore I'm ugly. There's no point taking care of myself anyway, since I don't attract anyone."
The truth is, the way others looked at me became crucial during this passage of my life. Like any teenager, I needed to be attractive—but I wasn't. Flirting seemed impossible. I struggled to understand or accept what struck me as shallow or silly in how others acted toward one another. And at the same time, how I wished I could be shallow and silly too! From the start, I had been confronted with life's gravity, with the profound: the person who might love me would love the person I was, and would learn later to love my appearance. I felt misunderstood, displaced. Suddenly I wondered: "Am I normal?" I was not just different physically, but psychologically too—and that seemed anything but good.
I went through real moments of despair, a desperate wish to die. I was haunted by guilt: what had I done to deserve this? Or: I have hurt my parents. And I felt enormous jealousy: my sister goes to parties; I don't. She looks after children; I can't.
I think that during adolescence, the suffering caused by handicap becomes internalized as sensitivity to the outside world grows. We must be very careful not to close ourselves off in these feelings and let the person withdraw into themselves. We need dialogue, and perhaps psychological support. We need to learn not to see everything as dark, to be practical and realistic: are you really sure you can't wear a lovely dress? That you can't hold a child without dropping him? It's true you can't carry him while walking, but what if you sit in a chair? There are compromises possible that parents don't suggest and don't think of, because they're afraid too.
I had a great need to compensate: if I couldn't be a dancer, I would be a literature professor. Desire is a powerful engine, but it can be dangerous too. The day I realize I'm not so strong in literature either—I see that it counts for nothing, that nothing makes up for anything.
Suddenly I understood that my mother was no longer there to buffer me, to shield me from the outside world. Yet how desperately I needed my parents in that time: a place to listen, to receive affection, the knowledge that they loved me unconditionally. That too is support.
I loved returning with them to moments from my childhood: the circumstances of my birth; how much my parents had loved me, how they fought for me to live; what progress I had made; what boldness, what courage I had found to become the teenager I was—proof that I was capable, that I had strength and energy in me.
A bit later, though still an adolescent, I became aware that my handicap could also be a gift. I was at a youth camp. I had taken refuge in the chapel and was crying. I was tired of fighting. I was exhausted from carrying all this weight alone in front of others. Then I looked at Jesus, and I saw that He on the cross lived what I lived—or rather, that I lived what He lived. He gave me grace! I was pierced through: something changed in me in that moment.
If the awareness of handicap is particularly painful during adolescence, it is not an event with a beginning and an end. Our whole existence is marked by such moments, stepping stones to move forward, times when, confronted with the gaze of others, we ask ourselves: Why me?
Cécile
(text from Ombres et Lumière n.164)