Don't mind me

In my dreams, I soar. I carry groceries and I take walks through the ubiquitous lights shining throughout the nights of the city. Their green and blue beams slice the sky into crystalline shapes. The lights fly across the sky, starkly contrasting the black veil of night. The tall city buildings climb endlessly into the sky, before vanishing beyond my vision. And I walk besides the river, on a sidewalk illuminated by the street lights dotting the road. I breathe in the fresh smell of water that still has a lingering taste of ocean salt. It's all real. So recent and fresh and present. This is my world, the world I can explore and traverse myself. I'm a free man filled with desire in a world that welcomes me with open arms and a teasing smile. 

And I wake up. For years now, this has been it. Every day, exhaustion fills me and I yearn to crawl back to the dreamland. It sucks being awake. 

Ever since that day. That day when reality felt so unreal. That day when life took away half my body. And here I am now, half of my physical being is gone and I become an alien unfamiliar even to myself. When I'm awake, all I realize again that I'm already half-dead. I've become an utterly useless throwaway of society. Even as I wake up, I cannot get out of bed without my helper, I require people's babysitting and poor mumblings of sympathy. I need their attention to use the bathroom, to eat food, to get anywhere. I hear sighs of annoyance from those assigned to take care of me. 

Every once in a while I feel it again. I feel that urge flooding my guts and filling my stomach and suddenly, I jolt upright wanting to extend my legs and just return to life a normal...just a normal person. I just want to be normal. But the bars of physical encapsulation trap me again and I realize my legs are gone. I've become a prisoner of a tiny wheelchair, a prisoner of pity and sympathy, a pathetic creature meant for nothing except a slow torturous death. 

I'm the dark side of society, the men so hideous that remain unspoken of. People treat me well, they give their places in line, they give better parking spots, all out of fear. People look at me and see the lifelessness inside me. Every corner I turn, I'm met with eyes of astonishment, and a rapid buildup of natural terror. I see their eyes inadvertently flutter away, unable to look at my hideous self. Every damn person I meet gives the same reaction. They hate me. The entire world "den[ies] me and my kind absolutely"(Mairs). 

So I look ahead to when I can close my eyes again once more. And my flesh grows back as I blossom into someone, a person with a name beyond "the disabled". I can overcome the limitations of reality and revive my crippled body and spirit. I can paint over the failures, the hatred, and all the stupid people polluting the world. And here I can once again feel accepted and loved and normal. Reality still feels like a dream.