g n i k : : a s s T tte p p e SS LIFESTYLE
I stare up from the bottom of the stairs, hungry. It is 10:19 pm, and precious minutes tick away, the only sounds left in my fatigued brain. The dining hall closes at 10:30. My hands grip the wheels of my chair, and I roll back and forth, as if shifting my weight. I am far too tired, and far too calorie-deprived for this puzzle. I can’t take the wheelchair lift tonight; the doors are locked. I learned that on the way down to retrieve my chair. In a shaky glass box, I’d descended into a tiny, cobwebbed pit surrounded by looming rock walls. I exited, tried the door handle—and the elevator door automatically swung shut behind me. It was just me, a locked door, and my desperate hope that this decrepit box would open again. It opened. And I ascended, right back where I had started. I can’t carry my wheelchair up the stairs. Taking the stairs is hard enough on its own; lugging my chair with me would be a struggle on a good day. Today is not a good day. I could put my wheelchair away and walk the three flights of stairs up to my second-floor dorm room, then collapse into bed for an unsatisfactory dinner of sleep. But my hands shake, and my stomach shudders at the thought of spending twelve more hours empty. 4 | UNTOLD
My Wheelchair and I Don’t Live on the Same Campus as You Do
words by max lakso
This isn’t much of a choice. Putting my wheelchair away and using the last dregs of my energy to wobble over to Anderson is a terrible option, yet the only way forward is on foot. Even when I finally got a mobility aid—after years of medical neglect, immobilizing pain, and desperate begging— everything comes back to this: no one cares how much you suffer from this. If you can do it like the rest of us, then you have to do it our way. Never mind that that philosophy is the only reason my pain became chronic in the first place… I’m about to slip back into the dreary basement halls when a figure appears at the top of the stairs. Although my face burns, I flag them down. And as I hover around them, pointing out what bits of the chair fold away and which ones are good handles, I am reminded that mobility aids are no match for unfriendly terrain. The burning pain in my feet pales in comparison to the pain of existing on a campus that is not built for me, and the sharp twinges in my spine sting less than the insult of becoming a selling point to the very same institution that physically rejects me.
