Disability is not a monolith, nor is it within a void, absent of other influences like class and wealth. I am a great example of this. Like many people, my experience with disability is quite unique, but it was a journey paved with class struggle, and an unpredictable home life. These experiences paved the person you see in front of you today, and as much as I wish everything could’ve been different, but I don’t think I would have the grit I have today without my struggles.

            Being born in a lower-middle class family is tough. Especially with ADHD and Autism. When you make a mistake you can clearly see how your actions which are out of your control affect your family financially. It feels me with guilt to see how difficult I made my parents lives with just me, being me. My home life wasn’t much better…. This was during a time when my father and mother were going further apart. My father brought prostitutes home, and my mother neglected us. As a result I started acting up in school, causing more hardship in my family. My childhood was an experience forever marred by guilt and self-doubt. I was also bullied in school and was constantly reminded that I will amount to nothing in this world.  

            While my father was becoming a better parent and my mother became more resentful, my teenage years were filled with me trying to find an identity. During high school, I decided to run track. My coach had become a second father figure to me, and together with my father, helped me cope when my mother abandoned us during my freshman year. Because of Covid, I had to revisit this all over again during my first years of adulthood. Not only did it ruin my dreams of running track in college, but it also caused my mother to pass away after years of not seeing her. I regressed back into my self-loathing self, and I felt that it was my fault that I never forgave her so that I could be at peace, and it made me ponder about my own mortality. In my subsequent semester, I was worried that I was going to amount to nothing in the world, like what those bullies told me. Throughout this episode of self-loathing, I forgot about the reality that I am failing my classes.

The summer of my freshman year, I set a goal in front of myself, and that goal was to never feel like this again. I am pleased to tell you that not only did I achieve that goal, I surpassed it! Over the past year, Ive gotten invaluable opportunities like heading to Portland Maine to northeastern university’s roux institute to learn how to be a successful entrepreneur, applied that knowledge gained in Johns Hopkins university’s Summer business academy, received a highly competitive spot in Chase bank’s advancing black pathways internship, and finally, being a part of an exclusive group of highly accomplished college students who happen to have a disability in the lime connect fellowship, and even got accepted into the university that denied me 2 years ago. This year is an allegory for my life. I started from the bottom, and now I’m here.  I climbed mountains, and crossed canyons. I learned that everything isn’t my fault, and I conquered the purgatory of negative thoughts I had about myself. I finally got medicated for ADHD, found out that I’m not only bisexual, but Non-Binary and now I am more prepared for my next phase of my journey, which is being there for my community, and making sure that any black kid in the slump that I was in knows that they aren’t alone. That a life of tragedy, sacrifice, and self-loathing can be turned into something positive.