I was born, quote-unquote, a normal boy. I could walk and do everything and anything I wanted to. Then, when I turned seven, I went into the hospital. I lived there for six months and came out a bilateral, six inches below the knee, quadriplegic. I was really sick with Bacterial Meningitis. They had to cut away dead tissue and dead skin, so I could live.
I can do everything just like everyone else, it may just take me a lot longer than it does everyone else. I hate having people look at me struggling to do simple stuff, make assumptions, and do it for me. I will figure it out. If I need help, I will ask, but it’s going to be after I try everything possible.
Possabilities makes it easier. I can interact with friends. I get to hang with other people that are disabled and struggling just as much as I am if not more. I learn how to get around the world by watching other people in the art program.
I started at Possabilities after I graduated high school in June 2008. I was in the employment program before joining the art program. I make art, and I sell art. I always knew I had the ideas and everything; I just didn’t know how to really do anything with them.
We, the staff and I, put marbles in a box, and I hit the box with my wheelchair to create my artwork. The marbles and the paint move around, and that’s it. I do commissioned work. I always have something to do.
My mom says that I’ve always been the happiest child out of her four boys, no matter what. Some people get a wrench in their plan, mess up their lives, and it makes them disabled after so many years of being perfectly fine. Places like Possabilities make it easier to deal with everything going on with your life. Think of all the people that are disabled that need all different people helping them and everything. I would say hell yes to more Possabilities.
Possabilities gives me a place to do art-and so much more. It’s a place where I don’t have to explain myself, where I can make friends and be part of a community that understands.
