The View From Here (24-11)
By: Justine Chichester
“Sometimes I wonder which is worse – confrontational people who are afraid of caring or caring people who are afraid of confrontation.” – Mardy Grothe
The fight-or-flight response is a physiological reaction that prepares the body to fight or flee in response to a perceived threat. I’ve recently been confronted with this exact scenario, and my question as a result is, “how is your fight-or-flight response affected when you have a disability, and cannot flee a situation?”
I was leaving a birthday dinner celebration last month and while I was waiting for my Uber to arrive, I was confronted by a woman who called me a “cripple.” My friend, who was walking with me, and I tried to explain to her that wasn’t an appropriate thing to say to anyone, but this woman doubled down on her name-calling. Doing our best to leave the situation, my friend and I walked away. I use a walker because of a spinal cord injury, and I walk slowly, often dragging my right leg a little. So, I’m not the quickest when it comes to walking away. The woman, who was obviously intoxicated, then followed me and got in my space. She touched my walker, and that’s when I became frightened. I wanted to flee. My instinct was to run away, to keep myself safe, but I couldn’t. I can’t run away, or even walk away quickly. It suddenly became very obvious fleeing was not an option for me anymore.
I realize now, that in all of the tools in my toolbelt I’ve developed over 10 years of living with a disability, including learning to walk again, learning to drive using hand controls, navigating life using a mobility device; I was severely lacking in one basic tool that would assist me in a dangerous situation such as the one I was faced with last month. What do I do, as a person living with a disability, when I feel threatened?
People say things to me all the time. When I’m at the grocery store, other customers ask about my wheelchair or my walker, or how I could possibly go to the bathroom as a wheelchair user (yes, I got that question from another customer one time at Publix). When I go out to dinner, another diner in the restaurant asked me “What in the hell happened to you?” Or when I’m at physical therapy, another patient said to me “I know exactly what you’re going through, because I broke my ankle one time.” I get that last one a lot, especially now that I’m walking using a walker and a cane. My response is always to smile politely, respond as respectfully as I can, and keep on moving. This incident last month, however, was the first time I’d experienced someone getting in my space and the fear resulted was life changing for me. Smiling, politely responding and slowly walking away just wasn’t an option.
As someone living every day, every moment, with a disability, we are very conscious of our surroundings. We have to be. Whether living with a visible disability, such as a spinal cord injury, or an invisible disability, such as autism, our daily lives require facing and overcoming challenges that able bodied individuals could never imagine. If someone gets in our space, and threatens our balance, for example, or causes fear while being too close to our bodies, it is triggering in ways only we can understand. I was so scared that I’d fall over, that night last month, I was clinging on to my walker for, what I thought, was dear life.
So, I know there are lots of self-defense classes and courses that teach you how to properly defend yourself in case of an attack. But what about for those of us that are the most vulnerable? How do we properly defend ourselves? What tools can we develop to add to our toolbelts in order to keep ourselves safe, if someone gets too close or becomes too aggressive?
These are questions Debbie and I and DIG are looking to answer. And I’m excited to explore this in the coming year to get some real answers and take some real action.
Luckily, that night after the dinner party I was surrounded by friends who assisted, and I got in my Uber safely and got home safely. I did have lots of tears in my eyes, but I also had a renewed sense of purpose to find a solution to this issue.
