L
ast Christmas, my friend gave me an electric, Barbie-pink dress with a sexy side cutout at the midsection from Zara. It was stunning and super chic. But I thought to myself, there’s no way I could wear that — I didn’t have a flat stomach, especially in a seated position. It would look so inappropriate on the “adorable” wheelchair girl who was desperate for grays and blacks so she could blend into the background. But I tried it on just for fun and looked in my full-size mirror. And there I saw it: a tiny, well-defined ab muscle peeking out of the cutout in my dress, while still sitting in my wheelchair.
Ever since my stroke at 23, I hadn’t exactly enjoyed seeing the imposter with a crooked smile staring back at me in the mirror, so I’d avoided looking. Based on how people glared at, dismissed or just flat out ignored me, I didn’t think I was missing out on anything. So, I was shocked and a bit exhilarated at the sight because I looked … not bad. Certainly not like I used to — I could see the scars left by my stroke from head to toe: swollen ankles, asymmetrical features, fisted hands. But it wasn’t all bad. Never once in my life had I had anything resembling abs and my smile didn’t even seem that crooked anymore. It had a bit of spark hidden inside it too. It wasn’t an easy beauty like a sparkling diamond ring or a burning sunset at dusk. It was less obvious, a “difficult beauty,” as disabled author Chloé Cooper Jones describes it in her memoir, “Easy Beauty” — it’s a beauty that takes time and patience to appreciate. A beauty that dismantles your conventional beliefs about what or who can or can’t be beautiful. Why had society always made me feel small, sad and straggly? Like my body should be invisible or hidden, instead of living out loud?
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