Stories

Brianna

Hunger, desire, and
learning to be alive

It took me years to realize that I struggled with mental health.

Looking back, I feel like it should’ve been obvious. There’s anxiety, and then there’s gasping for breath in a waiting room because your doctor mentioned surgery and you’re having trauma flashbacks of anesthesia and bloodwork and life-threatening operations. There’s depression, and then there’s sleeping till 4 p.m., playing video games till 7 a.m., losing entire years to the black pit in your brain.

“There are bad days, and then there’s living with a disability.”

Things changed for the better when I realized, quite suddenly, that I wasn’t just nervous, or sad, going through a tough time. I was anxious. I was depressed. I spent the first 15 years of my life waiting to die. When that didn’t happen, I didn’t know how to live. I didn’t know how to be a disabled person in a world that values the perfect body, with healthy lungs and straight teeth and a correctly shaped skull.

No wonder I was confused. No wonder I felt alone.

In my experience, things start to change when you acknowledge the truth of your situation. Sometimes, most times, the truth is ugly. Many of us are dependent, and lonely, and frustrated with our lives. We want more for ourselves, but we have been conditioned by society to ask for things we know we can get, like pity or discrimination. We don’t dare ask for the big, scary, marvelous things, like dreams or miracles.

Things start to change when you look the truth of yourself in the eye. You are an animal with hunger and desire. You want things—love, and recognition, and chocolate, maybe, if you’re anything like me. You want the world, and your want makes you human.

Humanity is hard to acknowledge. Especially when you grow up in a world that tells you through subliminal messaging and targeted ads that disabled bodies aren’t pretty, disabled people aren’t worthy, disabled _____ aren’t _____. (Fill in the blank. You might be surprised by what comes to mind.) Standing in front of this wide, wondrous world and asking for more, demanding it.

“I don’t blame you for shying away. But I am here to tell you that everything you’ve ever wanted is yours to have. You just need the courage to ask for it.”

People will turn you down. It’s inevitable. And, inevitably, their rejection will sting. But that is part of being human. That is part of being alive.

I could talk for hours about mental health. Meditation (try it), or acceptance and commitment therapy (my counseling framework of choice), or support groups (you never know until you show up). But I know from experience that, once I acknowledged all of the things I’d spent years pretending I didn’t want, life got better. Not because a magical switch was flipped, but because I allowed myself to be, for the first time in a long while, human, with hunger and desire.

I let myself be present.