Love Letter

This is an essay I wrote about how the able-bodied view the disabled...well, sort of...it's called "Love Letter" because it serves as a letter to those who love me, and because love is an essential ingredient in the "funny look". As much as I hate that look, I know it reflects my good friends' love for me. I now present "Love Letter".

Love Letter

Hello, my friend. How was your weekend? Did you start that English essay we were supposed to work on, and are you prepared for the chemistry test? Is it true you made out with him in the woods? Good luck in the soccer game!
Wait a second. Why are you looking at me like that? I know that look: the funny look. You’re staring at me as though I’m different from you, as if I’m threatening to shatter into a million pieces at any given moment, and must be handled with care.
Your eyes bore into me, telling me I’m less than your equal, if not less than human. Who defines humanity anyway? Does a deteriorating body cancel someone’s personhood? What about a semi-absent mind? An absent soul? I know I’m not exactly a real teenager anymore, and maybe I never really was. But even if I had been, pain prematurely ages people, catapults them into old age before they’re ready. It has done the same to me that it would to anyone: mentally and emotionally aged me fifty years.
Each day is a struggle: a struggle to get up, a struggle to function, a struggle to keep going and do my schoolwork and still have time for friends. Each day is a struggle to laugh and find joy. I work very hard to find the little happy moments: a pretty moon, a really big mushroom, a special smile on somebody’s face.
Is it branded into the back of my neck or something? I wouldn’t be surprised; the way my face burns under your look--that furtive glance that says you can’t imagine, you couldn’t do it--I can feel the fire creeping into my cheeks, my ears, my neck. Is there some sort of sign, a symbol underneath my hair perhaps, that tells the world I’m different?
What can you possibly think you’re staring at anyway? I’m just an ordinary person. There’s nothing unusual or different or strange about me. I have the same feelings you do. I feel happy for all the same reasons anyone else does, and the same things that sadden other people sadden me. I play with my hair and freak over homework and stay up late talking about boys.
We were all created by a loving God who cares for us. That includes you, and it includes me. Included in that is the old woman down the street who can’t get out of bed. God loves everyone, even the college boy locked up in a psychiatric hospital. God knows we are all perfect, created in His image. God knows.
So if God can see it, why can’t you? Why is God the only one who loves me for what I am, instead of what I’m not? It doesn’t take any kind of special sixth sense to see that I am special and unique for all sorts of wonderful reasons. I am vibrant, multitalented, compassionate, and inquisitive. I see the world with fresh eyes and take delight in the little moments. I live for my passions, my goals, and my dreams.
But still you stare and whisper as I struggle down the hall. You still peep furtively, as if you don’t want to be noticed, peering out from under your hair and into my face. What can you think you’re looking at? What do you expect to see?