RELATIONSHIPS

Hmmm…..Its 02:57 a.m, Thursday 23 April 2009 and I'm battling to sleep, trying to get over a someone. We all know that feeling right?

My four year old relationship ended about a year and a couple of months after my accident. My partner never gave up on me. Having spoken to a few disabled people, I gathered that some dwell on the idea that “he left me because of my condition”, honestly that’s what I thought too in the beginning, until I decided to snap out of it and be realistic.

How bout: he left me because I had changed, I was no longer the woman he fell in love with, and I allowed my disability to guzzle me. On the other hand one could argue and say; I was justified to be that way, but c’mon a person can only take so much, we all know that. Well yes there are those people who will be able to go all the way, but we know that it’s easier to help someone who also helps themselves

My other take on this is the subject of preferences, as individuals we all have our preferences, some women leave their men once they pick up weight, some men prefer slender women, some prefer tall, short, dark, and light skinned guys. Why must it be an issue when others don’t prefer paras? For those who didn’t know, there are actually disabled dating sites where men and women go because they are open minded t to date disabled people. What? Yep!! You heard it first here

I personally know of some men that my girlfriends would drool over and Id take one look at those men and think “nah, not for me” without even taking the time to engage in a conversation with the person or something like that. Why the double standards then? Because I'm permanently seated?!!

Even if they leave because of the disability, I refuse to dwell on that for that may result in me believing that I will never meet anyone because of my condition, leading to a depression, and we wouldn’t want that now, would we?

So to my girlfriends whom I shall refer to as Miss M, Miss T, Miss S and another Miss M, I don’t want to hear another “He’s such a dog, he couldn’t handle you Chommee”, hell yea, maybe he couldn’t handle a woman who was always feeling sorry for herself, can you imagine how unattractive that would be?

Having said that so easily, actually applying that is not an easy task after having gone through such an ordeal, but one should at least try and not give up. I mean we are all handicapped in some way, some able bodied people are more depressed than we are, but we all have to learn to get by somehow. The only difference is that some disabilities are more visible than others.

So eventually I got over the “he left cause of my condition” and developed a “I too deserve love, kids, hubby, picket fence and a dog in the back yard” attitude.

I'm the kind of person who analyses almost everything such that when men approached me I started analyzing their intentions with me and it hit me one day that “individuals are inquisitive by nature” remember when you were told not to touch the stove as a child”, well society doesn’t say “don’t date a paraplegic”, rather they don’t say it out loud, but trust me they do, delicately.

I’ve been in the dating game too and most of us have a check list, and again, that doesn’t only apply to guys wanting to find out what it’s like to date a Para. This curiosity stretches as far as men wanting to know what its like to date hot woman, fat woman, albinos, skinny womans, Indian woman, big breasted woman, a Venda woman, a model, an airhead, a successful woman, bladi bladi bladi bla….

A plus for me is that 80% of my friends are men and I have 5 brothers, so I'm bold to say that I’ve engaged or even eaves dropped in at least one conversation where one of them would say “hey check that girl out” and the other would reply “been there “, that would then be his “check!! “ on the list. I can already hear white guys going through their list “black chick….check!”, which by the way is also not accepted in their world but they do it regardless, because its human nature to be inquisitive. So hey, this is something we can’t get past to a certain extent.

Moving on….. I was always on the look out for such, questioning motives, analyzing, testing men, I managed to get away from most men, but it was draining to always want to learn people’s motives, your mind becomes your worst enemy. So I took I made a conscious decision to relax and allowed myself to date, a few months later, here I am, no sleep, writing this article. Well that should answer your question.

Lesson learned: Everything happens for a reason, come to think of it, had I not dated, I wouldn’t be able to write this column. So let’s give credit where it’s due. ‘Thank you Jack!”