Crip Speed
June, 2024
On a November day in the 6th grade, Mr. Childs, my English teacher, pulled me aside after class. He asked if I was ok, told me he could tell how I carried myself with my head up and chin lifted, but he also noticed that I wasn’t quite fitting in at my new school and wondered if I wanted to talk about it. He was correct to be concerned, although I don’t remember taking him up on his offer. I do, however, remember feeling incredibly seen. Not because he noticed my sullen demeanor or lonely experience, but because he noticed the lift in my chin.
This was a practiced art, developed over the year prior to combat the alien feeling of being in a body infiltrated by puberty and feeling powerless within my family dynamic. My classmates would poke fun at my khaki shorts compared to the skirts of most girls in my class, and the way I moved through the school hallways and beyond — with my eyes staring ahead and chin pointing forward — became my armor and shield.
This armor became all the more urgent in high school, reinforced by layers of foundation, mascara, and a speedy Manhattan-walk I picked up from my parents. For years I depended on this hasty sashay, with eyes aware of everything yet looking at nothing in particular. I feared that if someone saw a crack in this armor, they would see the terrified child underneath.
Of course, a chink in my shield occurred when I felt I required it the most—the first few days of college on the other side of the country. It took the form of a devastating left ankle sprain, the culprit being stairs (to this day, they remain one of my biggest threats). That year, the injury and pain in my ankle started to move throughout my body, claiming my shoulders, my back, my wrists, knees, toes, and hips. I fought to ignore that ache, limping away from it until it would force me to listen through another injury or the cracks and pops of my joints.
It would be almost 2 years of calculating steps, aggravating injuries, and blaming myself and my body before the pain forced me to take time off school and put every ounce of my energy into finding answers for the discomfort I was in. I was exhausted from bracing myself for each step, fearing a wobble would turn into a displaced joint or a sprain. I felt that there had to be a better way.
The better way came in the form of a metallic purple cane, ordered in secret during those months away from school. I stored it away in my closet, only daring to practice hobbling around on it until I knew I had the house to myself. Those months at home stretched uncomfortably, but as I watched the Northeast winter tentatively shift into Spring, something shifted in me too. I was stepping into my identity as a disabled person.
One weekend, when I was home alone, I courageously decided to place my cane by the door — to see if my notoriously don’t-ask-don’t-tell family would say anything about it. The only family member who brought it up was my mom, her tone echoing the time she found a water bottle filled with vodka in my closet during the ninth grade — like it was some sort of contraband. With time, I think she was able to see how much help a mobility aid provides me, but we still haven't really talked about it since. To my physical therapist Katie though, my cane was just another Tuesday, and she happily corrected how I held it, watching me stagger back and forth, and gave me the confidence to take my cane into the real world.
Walking with my cane, I’m acutely aware of each step I take: the length in my gait, potential cracks in my path, and coordinating my cane-wielding arm to join in this slow dance. I danced this awkward, clunky, crip dance all the way back to college in California. I loved how my cane allowed me to semi-function without getting injured every other day, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared of moving through college as a 21-year-old with a mobility aid.
Being a young person with a disability is a grieving-process. I grieve when I look out my apartment window, watching kids my age bound down their steps to go meet their friends and the troves of students biking to and from class. I grieve being able to move through campus unnoticed as I’m inundated with stares from the mobility transportation golf cart – or as I like to call it, the disabled bus. I grieve the split-second decision to bike to the beach on a whim, without having to negotiate parking, rickety wooden steps, or genuinely fight for my life while walking on sand. I grieve a time when I didn’t intimately know the 15 steps that it takes me to descend the stairs from my second-floor apartment. I grieve the gatherings I’ll never have the energy for, or when I could say yes to a hangout without first understanding the layout of the destination.
But it’s not all grief. In fact, negotiating how to make life work with my disabled bodymind has brought me radical joy. Specifically, the joy of crip speed. The joy of spotting the small flower growing between the cracks in the pavement and the incredible people watching and eavesdropping I partake in as I arrive places earlier to negotiate their accessibility. I find joy in the time it takes for my tea to cool down, and how good that sip tastes coupled with my celebratory ice cream sandwich — simply for making it through a day within a system that wasn’t built for me. Joy is sprinkled across each wall in my apartment – the walls I’ve spent hours taping any and all postcards, notes, posters, and pictures to that make me smile as I’ve begun to spend more and more time at home. The home where I can fully unmask, silently ice my aching limbs, and not apologize for any of the space I take up. Joy lives in the hour I take for myself in bed before I go to sleep – to journal, read, watch youtube, orgasm, cry, or sometimes both. I find tremendous joy listening to other disabled voices and stories as I wash the dishes I let pile up in the sink for three days while I was having a flare up, the stories continuously reminding me that I’m not alone, and to celebrate the sacred nuance of this slow existence.
I can no longer rely on the armor I once did. I’ve long since retired the shield of assured anonymity in my lifted chin and the hasty walk that would help me perform a confident conformity. Those are actions I simply cannot afford. Besides, the click of my cane on the floor announces me before I even show face in a given scenario, and my chin often remains glued to my chest as I walk, scanning my path for potential obstacles for my feet or cane. As terrifying as it was to lay this armor down, I’ve never felt more myself. Don’t get me wrong, some days I still feel like I need it, deeply uncomfortable in my skin and like I can’t handle one more prolonged glance. But I don’t have that luxury anymore. So I grab my cane like I would my keys as I exit my apartment and prepare to descend the 15 steps to ground level. And somehow, in between the grief and joy and stares and cracks in the sidewalk, I’m learning to love myself… at crip speed.
