Come out?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Come out?

But I’ve kept my disability quiet for so long that even writing this feels as if I’m coming out of the closet - until now I’ve always been worried about what people might think.

I was born with bilateral talipes - my mum, a nurse, insisted as a child I use the full medical terminology. To the average person in the street that meant nothing, so I’d have to say clubfeet and then show them the scars. Nowadays I never really notice the difference until I see new-born babies with their unblemished little feet which bear no resemblance to my own.

I’ve learnt to accept the constant aches in my legs and ankles which, I guess, people call “pain management”. Thankfully I live in a hot country because my arthritis - an unfortunate side effect of a series of operations to straighten my feet – isn’t so bad in the Caribbean sun.

The thing about an unseen disability is that it allows you to hear and experience certain things that people would stifle had the disability been more obvious.

For many here in Jamaica, being born disabled is still a mark of shame - not just for the individual but for the entire family.

I grew up in a Seventh Day Adventist home where I was taught to not only thank God for my daily blessings, but also to thank him for being born in the UK. As a teenager I didn’t thank God for that at all, but my parents were certainly deeply thankful.

My dad used to say: “If you were born in Jamaica, you’d have to drag yourself around on a piece of car tyre.” To my teenage brain this sounded like punishment from God and I didn’t understand what he meant until I moved there.