Hey guys! Welcome to another edition of Living with Disabilities, the series where I write about my life as a disabled person. A version of this post was supposed to be done a month ago, unfortunately my friends weren't able to send me their contributions to it in time for me to get it up. So, I'm going to do it this way and then when they're able to get their stuff to me, I'll do a follow-up at a later time, probably closer to my birthday in December, but we'll see. Today I'm going to be talking about my friends, and what it's like for me to make friends between my physical disabilities and being autistic. I'm going to be talking about my closest group of friends, for that reason, they're the closest people to me outside of my actual family. So let's get into it.
Growing up, making friends was extremely difficult. Partly because I spent so much time in the hospital and didn't get to interact with other kids outside of that setting. When the only people your age you interact with are kids in a hospital, those friendships probably aren't going to last very long, either because you don't keep in touch after one of you goes home, or because the other person passes away or whatever the situation ends up being. I did have some friends at OCTC, who I mentioned in my earlier post about that period of my life, but this was in a time before social media so keeping up with people was a lot harder than it is now. Especially once I started going to Greely Elementary School and they went to various schools in the city.
As time went on and I got older, making friends got harder and harder and by the time I was in grades 7 and 8 at Metcalfe Public, I didn't actually make any real new friends. At least none that continue to this day. Those two years were the most difficult years for me in terms of having friends, because, aside from Garrett, I really didn't have anyone that I could actually trust with my deepest, darkest secrets (namely whatever girl I had a crush on at the time). I mentioned Alex in my previous post about going to school as a person with disabilities, but, at the time I didn't know what I actually had with her and so I didn't make much of an effort to REALLY get to know her better or anything like that.
There was one girl though that I knew in grade 7, who I was friends with, though stupidly I also wasn't able to really maintain that friendship after that school year. The girl's name was Amy and she was on the bus with me. The funny thing is is that she actually annoyed the crap out of me because she would never leave me alone. At one point, sometime in the middle of the year, my bus driver, who I'd had since grade 3, said that Amy had a crush on me and I didn't really believe her, even though now, twenty years later, it makes total sense. Amy's parents sent her to a different school the following year so I didn't see her again until she came for a quick visit in the summer of 2006, or 2007.
In September, 2001 though my entire life changed. And not just because I started high school that year and had an operation that enabled me to walk on my own, without crutches. Somehow I found the group of people that I would end up spending the next twenty years hanging out with. All because a friend of mine at the time, Andrew, was dating a girl in this group and she accepted me in right away. Her name was Claire and she was the most energetic person I had ever met up to that point. There were other people I met that first month like KrisP, Simon, James, Bobby, Jenny and Barbara. Jenny, Barbara and Bobby were in my grade, so I had classes with all three of them, but everyone else was my age, but a grade ahead of me because of the whole being held back in Kindergarten thing, so I didn't have any classes with them. That was also the year I'd met Keira, who I also mentioned in a previous post. But there was one person I met at the end of the month that completely changed my life. Her name is Kelly and she is one of my bestest friends in the whole world, as well as one of my favourite people in the whole world.
Back then, Kelly was one of the few people who actually did her best to include me in things like group activities outside of school. For example, in January, 2002 the two of us started planning a trip to go see Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones in theatres in June of that year, once exams were over and school was done for the year. When the time came I ended up not being able to go, but everyone else had a great time according to Kelly. On top of that, Kelly would write notes to me and I had to respond or she'd write me a longer note, and I'd have to reply to two of them. She also called me on the phone all the time. That's how we got to know each other so well. Then, as adults we've become closer and I've spent entire weekends at her apartment, watching movies, episodes of Power Rangers, Super Sentai and Kamen Rider, countless Animes, and hosting beach parties, birthday parties, including her own 30th birthday that somehow managed to stay a secret from her, and just having fun together. I can't imagine what my life would've been like if Kelly hadn't come into it when she did. She's the only woman, besides my sister, I can actually say that I grew up with her. She's even visited me in the hospital almost every time I've been admitted since we met all those years ago.
Before the pandemic hit, I started having Kelly over and I'd make dinner for her every once in a while. We'd eat, sit and chat, maybe watch an episode of an Anime. One of my favourite memories of Kelly and I is last year. I treated her to a day at Ottawa Comiccon, because the person who I normally buy a ticket for, Brad, decided not to go last year. Anyway, this whole event led to my very first sleepover, where a friend slept over at my house. That was never possible when I was a kid because of my medical stuff, like my feeding pump and all that stuff. Kelly slept over in my basement, so that we could be up and ready to go by 9 o'clock in the morning to be at Ottawa Comiccon by the time the event opened for the day. We just walked around all day, and she actually spent more money than I did, which is funny since I tend to spend a lot of money at Ottawa Comiccon. She also waited with me while I was in line to meet Tom Welling, Kevin Conroy, and Anson Mount.
A year later, I met Brad. Now, the way I met Brad was different than the way I met Kelly, or anyone else for that matter, but it's still so in character for the group that I don't think I'd have wanted to meet him any other way.
So, back in grade 10 I was still being tube fed, and I was on my portable feeding pump at school, which meant having to refill it during my lunch hour. So I usually got to our lunch spot later than everyone else. On this particular day, it was Simon's 16th birthday and Kelly had brought cake and we had a whole in school party with everyone in the Lunch Group (I know, the name is lame). As usual, I got there a few minutes late, and as I come in, I see this really tall guy that I had never met before standing there, his back facing the doorway (we were in the hallway behind the school's gym) with a tiara on his head. Now, you have to understand that we were a really odd group of people, and at this point I'd known Kelly for a year, so I knew that if a guy was standing there with a tiara on his head, she was involved in getting it up there, even if she wasn't completely responsible. I did a double take and just shook my head, knowing that the new guy was screwed if the girls had gotten to him that early.
All that was fine. But then Brad was stupid enough to keep coming back to hang out with us every lunch hour. Honestly after the tiara thing I'm surprised he didn't ask his mom if he could change schools. Lol. Anyway a year later there came a turning point in our friendship where Brad went from being just a guy I hung out with at school to being my best friend. I was in the hospital having an operation that enabled me to eat normally, and to also get rid of the feeding tube, and I wasn't able to go to the Metcalfe Fair, which is where I had met Kelly two years earlier. So my mom brought some of the guys to see me at the hospital instead. The girls chose not to come as they were planning on exacting some revenge on a guy who had been harassing the group at school two years earlier. Anyway, three out of the four guys who my mom had brought mainly ignored me and talked amongst themselves. Brad on the other hand did not partake in their conversation. Instead he and I talked since he was there to see me, not talk with everyone but me. Anyway, my IV pump needed to be plugged in so Brad helped my mom take me back up to my hospital room (we were in the cafeteria). The other guys didn't even offer. So that was a major turning point.
However, Brad and I became even closer after high school. When I was in college, Brad either had Fridays off or got off work early, so at first he just came over and we'd play Halo and Halo 2 for a couple of hours. He beat me every single time because he's way better at strategy than I am and would always get me easily. Then as time went on, Fridays became our go out and have fun afternoons. We'd go to the movies, go out for dinner, go hang out with other friends and things like that. The day before everything shut down because of the pandemic, Brad was the last person I went out with and we did our usual routine of going to a few comic book stores and then going for lunch. So that was fun.
Brad has done so much for me over the years. When I'm sick, recovering from surgery, or simply not able to go out anywhere, he picks up comics, books and movies for me so that I'll have new stuff to read and watch and not get bored. He also tries his hardest to get me into Anime and stuff like that, even though he knows it's not easy for me to get into that kind of thing. Brad is the guy I would call if I needed help and nobody was home or if I just needed to get out of the house, though in that instance he usually would show up at my house before I had the chance to call him. Lol.
Then in 2013 I met three people that I have grown to love dearly. The first was Katie. I've talked about Katie a lot on the blog, but we met because of Matt, a friend of Brad and I, who had been married to someone that Brad and I went to high school with. Anyway, Matt, and his then wife, Lauren, used to have us over to Matt's parents's place (and then their own place once they got their own apartment) to hang out. Brad and Matt are both really into video games, so they get along really well because of that. So one evening there was this girl there who I had never met before. Lauren introduced us, and Katie and I hit it off. It took a little while for our friendship to get going, but there was no way I was going to pass up the chance to get to know this new person. And it turns out we have a few things in common, including the fact that we both went to OCTC for special groups for kids with disabilities. She and I started going to the beach together every summer, we started having movie nights, and I also cook dinner for her. She was even my date for a friend's wedding a year ago, which was super fun.
The thing about Katie that I really latched onto is how genuine she is. I never have to wonder what she thinks of me, because she shows it and I like that I can just be myself and it won't make her run away, screaming. Kelly and Brad too obviously, but I've known them for almost 20 years. I met Katie after high school and after college, and I'd met so many people that didn't feel that way to me and ended up hurting me, because of my disabilities, both physical and mental, so it was nice to just hang out with someone who tolerates me for long periods of time.
I remember one day early on in our friendship, Katie came over in the morning, and we spent the entire day playing Super Nintendo. We'd tried playing the Nintendo 64, but it died on us while we were playing a round of Super Smash Bros. and as much as we tried, we just couldn't get it to work, so we switched to the SNES and taking turns on Super Mario All-Stars and Super Mario World. It was winter time too. So that was fun. And like I said, we'll have movie nights where we'll watch any kind of movie. Nothing is off limits, though neither of us are into horror movies, so we've never watched one of those together. I've shown her Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, the first episode of Star Trek: Voyager, and she's shown me a few movies too.
Also early in our friendship, and actually this is how it really began, Katie used to come over on Thursday nights to watch The Big Bang Theory with me. It started off as every week, but then we cut back to every two weeks, mainly because most often she'd come over right from work and was tired. Eventually we stopped doing it altogether because it was a lot for her to come over for that all the time.
A few months after meeting Katie, I was introduced to a guy who has been the bane of my existence as well as one of my best friends. His name is Jonathan, and we connected because of Star Wars. And because we have the same Cardiologist. He doesn't live in Ottawa though. He lives in another city, two hours away. But before the pandemic, especially after I made the mistake of introducing him to Brad, we'd see each other pretty frequently. Brad and I have taken road trips to see him, and of course he'd come up to Ottawa for appointments or just to surprise me on a day where Brad and I were supposed to be hanging out. Yeah, that's why Jonathan is the bane of my existence. Mostly because he and Brad get along really well.
In 2015 Jonathan came to Ottawa, with his friend Sarah, and joined me, Brad, and my girlfriend at the time, Vicki, at Ottawa Comiccon. It was a great weekend. I mean before that I'd been to Ottawa Comiccon with a group before, but that was the first year where we actually made plans to go as a group instead of just Brad and I going and then running into people we knew there. That was the year that Austin St. John, who played Jason the Red Ranger on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, was a celebrity guest at the con and the only year I've ever splurged and gotten a Photo Op with a celebrity guest. So yeah that was a fun weekend.
The final person I met in 2013 was someone I met in the most unexpected place ever. At church, on Christmas Eve. We had two services on Christmas Eve, the family services, which was just the congregation singing Christmas Carols, and then the later candlelight service. That year I decided to go to the family service, because I didn't want to be at the busier candlelight service that year. After getting a ride from a family I knew at church, I sat in the back and sat by myself. Anyway, this woman and her mom sat in front of me, and after the service I struck up a conversation with her. Her name is Laura and when I got home from church I looked her up on Facebook and sent a friend request. She responded right away and by the end of Christmas Day I had asked her out on a date and she agreed. We dated for a bit, but eventually we just decided that we'd be better as friends. And we've been friends ever since. She has a kid now, but we talk whenever we can, and when I was in the hospital in 2016 with the abdominal problems that led to me needing to have a full bowel resection done in 2017, she came to see me all three times. She's a great person to hang out with and an awesome person to talk to.
Now, I didn't make any new friends again until 2016. I was part of an online geek group (specifically for dating) and I met a woman named Michelle. We were both single at the time and weren't living super busy lives, so we texted each other every night. And then it turned out that she was Brad's step-cousin, so then it just kinda went from there. She and her husband, Jonathan (not the same one I talked about earlier) live down the street from my place and so they've come over for front lawn hang outs a few times. It was actually their wedding that Katie and I went to a year ago. Michelle is also the one feeding my VHS addiction right now. Particularly my Disney VHS addiction. I got the Robin Hood VHS from her a few weeks ago, and apparently she has two more boxes of tapes for me to go through. Jonathan is also a huge geek so we'll just sit and chat for hours, and it's a lot of fun. Michelle came into my life during that time where there was so much uncertainty. My parents were trying to sell our house, I was in and out of the hospital with abdominal pain, and other things were happening at the same time, and we just liked to chat. To this day I'll just text her and be like, "Hey! What's up?" and that would just start a conversation.
So now that I've talked about my friends, it's time I talked to my friends. Seriously you guys are all such amazing people. I can't imagine what my life would be like without any of you in it. You're kind, funny, caring people, and I can't think of anyone who is as lucky as I am to have you be part of my world. I honestly can never thank you enough for being there for me when I've needed you. I could spend a thousand lives repaying all of you for everything you've done for me in this one. I love you all!
Some able bodied people think that disabled people can't have friends or shouldn't have friends. I'd even been told that a few times by kids at school when I was younger. But, this post shows how wrong they are. Because I don't just have friends. I have a second family. A family that I chose rather than just the one I was born into. And trust me, I never thought that would happen. I went into high school thinking that I'd have one or two friends tops when I got there. Instead the Lunch Group welcomed me with open arms and from then to now I'm so very grateful for all of the people who have stuck around, because while not impossible, it is very difficult for people with disabilities to make friends. Many people don't know how to handle someone with disabilities and because I also have the unfortunate addition of being autistic the reading social cues is something I have difficulty with, but the people that I've mentioned have helped me with that over the years.
That's gonna be it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow with a review of It: Chapter One from 2017, based on the Stephen King novel, It. I also have a comic book review coming for you later this week, as well as a review of the first episode of the second season of The Mandalorian. I'll be watching that on Friday night so expect the review to come out sometime on Saturday. Later.
