My Announcement

For the last few years, I’ve been hiding a secret. Especially from my family and my closest oldest friends. I have 2 new friends who have never known me any other way so that helped but could my best friends handle it? Would my mom feel disgraced? At first it made me sad, then mad, them embarrus. Would I lose their respect if I admitted my true feelings?

 

As the months passed, I secretly embraced my new lifestyle. It even excited me. I no longer felt confined. And I finally decided this was the Christmas. I would announce to the world this is who I am.

 

The reactions were pretty much as I predicted. All my college friends said they saw it coming but as long as I excepted it and they still got crip parking, I was still tolerable. My family had a harder time dealing with it. My dad was proud. My siblings understood. My mother had the worse but the most predictable response, if I truly loved my husband and son, I’d never let it go this far… There are hospitals…

 

I feel a great relief has been lifted of my shoulders. I can now enter any friends house proudly without them looking horrified. As for mom, she’ll get used to it and in about 8 to ten years I can parade my new lifestyle in her house.

 

And now I’d like to come out here. I, Claire Theriot Mestepey, am a… a full time wheelchair user. I like it. I go faster. I do more. (oh come on, what did yall think?)

 

May this year we all are healthy, no matter if we are marathon runners or happily racing around the camp grounds in electric wheelchairs. May we all have a little more money in our pockets. And may we have endless Saturday nights of playing with each other hair. Because it in my kitchen, surrounded by friends I truly am myself.

 

So I wish all of you a very happy new years. May 2006 be a year filled with good health, much laughter, and endless possibilities.