The Symbol

I’m sitting here in my man cave, office, other room, whatever you want to call it. My fiance and I have a two bedroom house,we sleep in the same room, sometimes she will go sleep on the couch because apparently I snore too loud when I’m sleeping. Regardless the other room that I like to refer to as my man cave has a Xbox 360, Xbox One, and a computer; there is a framed Pink Floyd poster in front of me on the wall and as we speak there is a three quarter empty whisky bottle sitting to the right of me. That I plan on finishing when I get home.

I just wrote a post over the past three days, I’m kinda proud of it, I actually went through and edited it, multiple times. I think it is a good story of a past experience that I had in my life.

Anyways, I don’t have anything to do, in about an hour I have to go meet Shannon when she gets off of work so we can go grocery shopping. So I might not even get done with this post before I have to put my wheelchair in the back of my car and drive a few miles away from my current location.

I’m on the site going though blogs and seeing what other people are writing about and I came past this post for The Daily Post, it was all about symbolism. That made me think of something that I can write about. The idea has been brewing in my head for awhile anyways.

Symbols, symbolism, there is a symbol that I rock everyday, sometimes in more ways than one.

It’s even on my arm, proudly displayed.

I grew up being the victim of bullies. Unlike many other kids who got bullied I was the disabled kid. I can talk about this forever, but I learned one thing when I moved to Washington State at the age of 14.

The people that were making fun of me were doing it in the search for popularity. While it was not right, I can understand it. If you are able to make fun of yourself while remaining true to yourself you can take away their power. If you do not care that someone is making fun of you, you will therefore stop someone else from being a friend with someone else because you are hurt and both of them think it’s funny for some reason. That will then stop them from making fun of you because they don’t gain anything from it.

It’s not even that they find it funny, the experience gives them something to bond over, and if you keep giving them the reaction that they want, before you know it those two people will effectively morph into thirty before you know what has happened.

And I know, it happened to me.

At an older age I became interested in tattoos. And I was at the point of thinking, “You know what man, I’m handicapped and if you don’t like it you can just go fuck yourself.”

I’ve learned that if something does not make you happy it’s a waste of your time to try to make that thing something that can make you happy. Sometimes the best thing you can do is ignore or get rid of things that don’t make you happy.

That is one of, if not the main reason why I got the handicapped symbol tattooed on my arm. It is a little therapeutic for me too, it reminds me that I am who I am, where I was, where I am, and how it is pointless to try to fit somewhere you don’t belong.

I’m not trying to say to stop trying to get your dream job, or stop playing a sport, or anything else that you feel passionate about; I’m just saying you’re going to be really sad if you are in a wheelchair and try to play for the NFL.

I think that is what the handicapped symbol means to me.

I even have a blue shirt with the handicapped symbol on it that says, “In it for the free parking,” underneath it.

Over the years I became really good at this making fun of myself thing, and to me I’m not making fun of myself, I’m just being proud of who I am.

I also think that poking fun of yourself can be inviting to others, they might be more willing to talk to you and become a friend because confidence is an attractive thing.