I feel like a horrible person today. I feel like a shell of myself and I hate it.
My heart is broken. A member of the opposite sex did not cause this break to occur, a sport did! All I have ever wanted to do since 3rd grade is play sports and I have been systematically excluded from success.
It’s all because when I was a baby I didn’t have enough sense to break my neck. Silly me, got oxygen deprivation and hurt my central nervous system instead. I should have known better, but they just don’t teach you these things when you are a minute old.
You know how miserable my childhood was because I could never figure out how to get my hands to work like the therapists said they should.
Do you know how wonderful it feels to be introduced to a community of people who struggle just like you do? And how gut wrenching it is when your new brothers mock you because you can crawl or go down a ramp a little easier.
People seem to forget how hard it is for me to drive and people have no idea what is like to use only one eye at a time or what a startle reflex is really like? A startle reflex is a lie that CP constantly sends to your brain. It tells you to stop every time you do something right. Take a push STOP! Pass the ball STOP! Catch the ball STOP! You try too hard to fight it and some sloppy things are going to happen.
Please ask the Lakeshore staff how many countless hours I have tried to retrain my startle reflex and the ridiculous amount of hours I spend in the weight room and fieldhouse trying to live up to a 3.0 standard I now realize I can not.
The league has no problem taking my 10-20 hours a week of volunteer work, but God forbid I want a fair classification so I have the same opportunities as everybody else. I have big dreams and it is hard to see court time on any team if you are 1.0 higher then you should be. I have gone to ridiculous lengths to get court time on other teams and no body seems to notice.
I am mean, I am horrible and I am not myself because I so distraught. All these negative words describe me because of my mind set, but I refuse to accept that the pats on the heads and the shrugs of the shoulders are going to cut it anymore.
What is the point of a classification system? We would not have a sport if Duncan Campbell and his teammates sat back and did nothing like I and the rest of my CP and polio siblings are being asked to do. Lets try some new things; we just want a fair shot. When people tell me one more year, my response is I have already waited 18.
Basketball punched me in the mouth so I put my hope in track. I was fast among my CP peers after many years of hard work just in time for the IPC to eliminate my Paralympic dreams. For Beijing they kept CP field so I picked it up. In less then a year I broke the US record in four events, but was nowhere near the world record. I knew I wasn’t going to make Beijing last summer by the time May rolled around, but I thought since I had four US Records I would at least go to my own nationals in Arizona. Nope, it was considered an international meet using international standards. I was not allowed to compete in my own nationals after earning four national records.
CPs are systematically kept from success and I am the squeaky wheel that is not going to quiet down until there is change. The next time someone tells me to be patient take a moment to think what I have already endured.
Like I said I am a whiny horrible jerk. I am very very tired and I just want a level playing field so I can close my eyes and see one or two dreams come to pass.
I still love everybody, the status quo of the system just breaks my heart.
Thanks for reading
Chris
1 comment:
yeah, I know man, CP pretty much suuuucks. I was in the wrong swimming classification for the same reasons but like you say it's way harder in rugby. That said you've come so far already it would be a real shame to not push on through this like you do everything else in life.
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