Puerto Rico

My first American Spring Break remains one of the best weeks of my life and the most fun I've had since I moved to Florida. And I have my amazing friends to thank for that. I've never experienced nothing like that before. It was something I've seen in the cheesy teen TV shows. A bunch of friends spending a few days together in the sun after months of hard work in law school. It feels like an American college tradition, if you can afford it. Kids flocking to exotic locations like Mexico or the Carribbean. You want to experience something different, let your hair down and relax and then get back to reality like it never even happened. I grew up thinking that my disability would always be a burden on others. Every trip I've ever taken before moving to the States my father was always with me. And I would see him struggling. As he was lifting me, moving, loading and unloading me, his back suffered. Such trips were few and far between. And I always felt guilty, that I'm putting him through this. Even as I was getting to wherever I was going I worried how whoever I was with would manage as we get there. Will there be stairs? Will it be a task getting into the room and would I have to stay in most of the time because going up and down was just not worth the exhaustion. Even as I moved to America, getting an apartment with a student I didn't know, my parents tried hard to get on his good side, felt I needed to develop a relationship that would prevent him from leaving me behind, in a way to make up for having a disabled roommate. I guess I was always seen as someone who relied on others and then had to win them over so they wouldn't hold it against me.

But then my friend Michael told me he was planning a group trip to Puerto Rico. Without hesitation I said I wanted in. And it wasn't a problem, as they were happy to have me. I thought he did all the work as we were buddies, but it was actually his girlfriend at the time and my soon to be good friend Katrina that dedicated a lot of time to go in and change all the reservations to include me. I thought, it can't be that bad, because it's an American territory and everything is more or less accessible in the US. If there will be any lifting involved, we'll have strong, young guys to help. And maybe they won't won't mind, because they'll be happy to have me there. And maybe I won't have to prove anything. Perhaps this one time I can just have fun without having to worry how having to deal with a wheelchair spoils everybody's fun. And I can stop feeling guilty and wonder what it's gonna be like. And guess what- We've had a blast. I've spent a week with these caring, amazing people and the only time I had to stay behind was when they went to the rain forest. San Juan proved to be a nightmare on my wheelchair. The bumpy, brick streets, the narrow sidewalks with holes. This wasn't America. My friends ended up assisting me a lot, but it was short term. They were happy to do it and I wasn't so hell bent on being independent all the time. The goal was not to prove anything, succeed against the odds at all cost, it was about having fun. Jen, Adina, Michael, Katrina, Grace and I rented a van to move around the island. We went to the beach where I swamped my chair for one of these beach models with big wheels. We visited a casino. On my first evening I miscalculated how steep the hill was, couldn't slow down, lost control over my chair and hit my head as I drove into some rocks. My friends were there as I was on the X-Ray table. I was actually told not to eat and not to sleep that night, but we no one really understood the doctor even those of us who claimed to speak Spanish, so I went straight to bed. And then I had breakfast. I didn't mind that happening and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Because I had fun. And I was fun to be around. And I felt included and loved in strange country miles and miles from home.

Tallahassee

I can do a lot of things and I try to be independent. But there's one thing I have to relate on others for. If there's an engagement that requires me to be up and running first thing in the morning in a place that is many hours away from where I am. Wednesday night and most of the following day I've spent in Tallahassee and not because I wanted to explore Florida's beautiful capital city I might add. All of the new attorneys are required to attend an 8-hour long workshop filled with ethics related panels and presentation, usually within their first year of practice. While they have to to continuously educate themselves by watching lectures, this was the only one that demands attendance in person. Failure to timely comply with this results in sanctions against the attorney. The class is offered in a number of often exotic and tropical locations, never in Gainesville and it's always one date, one place ever couple of weeks. You'd think that a city with a big state university and a highly ranked law school would get it once in a while, but not from what  I had seen. If I chose any later date, I'd have to decide on Southern Florida, which is even further. Miami is, I believe about eight hours of a drive away.

 Orlando and Jacksonville are the closest- also a bit of a drive and filling up quickly. By the time I was able to find a ride to one of those cities, registration was already closed  The  Bar wasn't able  to get me in that class, although they did understand my problems, so they have given me a one year extension. Still, it was a requirement I needed to complete, that was hanging over  my head like a sword.  The extension  deadline would eventually be up, and they might as well have given me twenty years to complete it, still it wouldn't make getting around Florida any easier for me. So you can imagine how relieved and incredibly grateful I was when one of my friends offered to take time off work, drive me there and back staying the night., We all practice law on the same plane, either I can make it work or I can't. I guess those are the reasons why the Bar wouldn't offer alternatives, like watching the lecture online. I rarely if ever advocate for different treatment of people with disabilities, but I never quite understood why anybody had to be there in  person in the first place, especially given the cost and logistics of being there particularly on a  weekday. All I could think of was, since ethics are very important, they really wanted  us to see it. But the truth is, sitting in that room for many hours from 8:30 am mad it very difficult to digest any information and many people struggled to stay awake. The early beginning time was not really helpful to people coming in from other places and hotels. Ideally you would break it down to a number of lecture days, but nobody would be able to stay there or be away from work for that time. I was lucky to have an excellent professional responsibility professor so I knew a lot of those rules and cases already and she made us work hard in class to be able to talk about them in some detail. But I can understand how the Bar can't really be certain what and how some of those school teach and what the attorneys know about it. The format was really hard on all of us and there were very few breaks, which meant I would be sitting in my wheelchair, in that fixed position for many hours. Understand one thing- there was nothing about those presentations that made it really necessary for us to be there. Audience participation was minimal.  Some of the segments were prerecorded anyway. You could have just as easily ask local law schools to set up live feed presentations throughout the state in a way bar review courses do if they were that concerned with people attending. A lot of the information was very Tallahassee specific, although most if not almost all in the room had no connection to the area. Yet we listen about practicing there, organizations to join there, socials I would never attend it was very strange. It was one thing that the lunch wasn't provided (although that wasn't clear from the materials)- we were not even given any kind of maps or ideas where to go. And once again people in cars drove away in search for food and I stayed behind. The odd thing is some people got in from South Florida or other States because their deadline was up. So all of us would only come  in to the city for one night, only to watch this. Finding the place, finding parking was apparently tricky on many people That's the thing about America. Everybody has a car, there's this presumption that it's so easy to get around a lot of places don't really worry about effective public transit. Having a class at 8:30 meant we'd have to stay over night. I ended up booking an extended stay studio, which was just as expensive as a hotel but apparently they only did housekeeping every seven days. Finding a two bed wheelchair accessible room proved to be really difficult in Tallahassee and I had a Priceline agent looking one up for me. And the closest he could find was  one bed with a pull out sofa. "Whatever'- I said. I just wanted it to be done.

At the convention center itself the day went on not without adventures. The wheelchair cabin was so small I could barely closed the door and I slipped on a puddle of urine that nobody chose to clean and ended up washing myself with soap and paper towels as the lectures picked up again. Not a good day. Not a fun day. Don't think I'll be going to Tallahassee again anytime soon.  But at least it's done. On our way home again, stuck in one position for few hours going numb I dozed off for a good portion of the trip. And if there ever was a thing that would make you never want to practice law again it probably would  be that class. It was dark and depressing as one of my colleges commented when we were told that if we ever do anything wrong the Bar will find us and likely we'll end up there. But content is not even the point for me, because I'll always do what the bar asks me to do if I am able. I just hope it asks me to do things I'm able to do in the future.

Journalists

When my friend Claudia heard I would be meeting a group of UF students to talk about a project they wanted to do about me, she laughed. "I hope they will forever ban you from that class"- she said jokingly. Most of the articles and media released about me started as some type of a class assignment. In ways, I can see her point. She did a photo presentation about me in 2007 that followed and was followed by Gainesville Sun Articles. David met me for a spread in Alligator. Some girl whose  name I don't remember took pictures of me for a photo class. Andres'hard work landed me on the list of Gainesville's most interesting people. Not every project ends up published by I'm still happy to do it. Two years ago, if not  more I was asked to help a student with his interviewing presentation and I jumped at the opportunity. Because whatever it is that people want me to do to learn more about my disability I will do it. In all honesty, it's been three years since anything was published about me. In many ways I feel like a different person. Not only have I finished law school, I have passed the Bar and got my green card. The Conductive Education Academy I have worked so hard to succeed has since collapsed. I'm now weighing my career options some of which may take my away from Gainesville. It's a very scary but also a very exciting point in my life for anyone to observe and chronicle.

 I want to do it, because if anyone can do my story justice it will be the young journalists of tomorrow. They will have the compassion, the understanding, the kindness everybody's personal story needs and the drive and determination to be seen and heard. As we set down trying to bounce off ideas off each other, me trying to interfere as little as possible, I've decided to be pretty much an open book. I always talk about the sacrifices my parents made for me,  how moving to Gainesville was pretty much a spontaneous mved although though through  in many ways not so much in  others. How alone I felt through the years I thought for my green card, how misunderstood in my quest to get into law school. How abandoned I still feel at times. We were sitting at a creamery strategizing over Gelato and I adored their passion, excitement and involvement. Some of them had a personal reason for wanting to do this. And in that way, I think their work will be fired up and true. Even if their work doesn't make it outside of the classroom I  don't mind . Whatever I can tell them, whatever I can show them perhaps one day will inspire them to dig deeper, to care more, to uncover great human interest stories. Because I've seen students working much harder, delivering much better work than some professionals. And if I can put fire under them to set them on a quest I will do my best to try. The mission goal is awareness, truth and hope. The dedication it takes to shed the layer of routine and show people with disabilities as real human beings without the sensational tone is something I hope this can accomplish

Freedom: I need more

I was 19 when I started studying law at the University of Warsaw. I felt like I have arrived, like things from that moment on would be different, I felt more free than ever before in my life. In elementary school and all through high school my parents were always with me. They would walk me to school, walk me back, sometimes be there between classes and my mom was at home, always there throughout most of my childhood. I didn't really go anywhere or see anyone unless my dad drove me there and that was very infrequent. Friends would mostly have to come to me and we would spend time in my (or my brother's room. It wasn't bad really since our apartment was always filled with kinds who would be fascinated with one of the first computers in our neighborhood. But the older you get, the more space you need. My teen years were a bit hard on me. You can't walk away to be your own person, you can't physically leave, you can't separate yourself from your family if you wanted to.  At times like that you feel that the only place that is truly yours and really private. What University did for me is it took me out of that environment. I would disappear for three quarters of a day at a time for the separation, a change of scenery I needed so badly. The paratransit minibus would pick me up every day, take me home every night. Yes,  I would have to know my schedule two weeks in advance, because that's how you booked those things and I'd be penalized for canceling without proper notice.   Now as I look back it strikes me how there was nothing remotely spontaneous about my (original)  college years.  But what mattered to me is that I could go, function as my own person, that my dad wasn't involved as much. On Fridays I would even have them drive me to see a movie at one of those newly built multiplexes at wheelchair accessible shopping malls. When you grow up with a disability in a place like Poland you learn to lower your expectations. You know you live in a wheelchair inaccessible city,  but what can you do? It will not change overnight. It will most likely not change in your lifetime and you've got to make the best of it somehow. Figure out what your "box" is and how you can function within it. Most places felt off-limits to me. As I got older and heavier the more difficult it was for my dad to take my anywhere. 

 Once in a while, mostly before highschool he'd muster some strength to take me to a museum, a school trip or the opera with my class. He'd pay for it with his health and I would never be able to do on my own. You just grow up knowing you don't do certain things and it's mostly school and home and home and school.  Every bit of freedom gained felt like a gift. Yes, it was repetitive and pre-planned and structured but I was out of the house. And I didn't really think about what else is out there and what was fair. Many people in wheelchairs in Europe live like this every day I'm sure. I felt free. At that point I have just discovered that I could be a prominent media writer... from my bedroom. The internet allowed me to be heard, people read and valued what I had to say. At the University, with all the extra centers and courses I've taken on I was too busy to wonder about any different type of life. A lot of my disabled school friends from other majors I often shared a life with would still have their stay at home moms hop on the bus to go to school with them, well in their 20's. I wondered, would they also be there with them to wipe their mouths on a first date dinner. i was glad it wasn't me. And it felt like it was enough. Until it wasn't. 

I wanted to be able to go shopping on a whim, step out for a coffee as I just thought of it and go absolutely anywhere and everywhere you wanted to. Freedom feels like a drug in that sense, a strong addiction. You just want more. And nothing else is good enough once you tasted what your life could be like. You just won't settle for less than. No rationalizing will work. And the more you have, the more you need even more. What was good 8, 12 years ago isn't good enough now. This feeling that I needed more, that whatever this was, wasn't working set me on a journey 8 years ago. This urgency I can't explain. But whatever it is, I get it again. Because I still need more, more challenges, more change.  And I'm ready for that step again.

Why do I blog?: Disability, law and passion

My parents believe that I'm being too open about many aspects of my life. The fear is, I guess, when you put those things out there, forever they will remain and who knows what may end up haunting me or what I may end up regretting 20, 30 years from now. I blog about them freely and frequently.  I try not to do things that will embarrass me in the future. Many of my law school friends would go through their profiles on Facebook, censoring their lives, changing their names so they would never be found when they were applying to the Bar or interviewing for jobs. Never happened to me. It's not that I don't put anything wild and crazy on the internet. It's that I don't do a lot of the things I see my peers doing in the first place. Internet is no different from real life. At all times I try to be respectable. Dressing nice, talking politely - just like my mom raised me. And just like in the real world I never did anything wild or outrageous, I would never allow myself to be careless in the virtual one. Because it's no less real than the other one. I've never had any compulsions to act out. You may say I'm pretty square that way. The best way to take control over your life is  having almost nothing to hide. One area that I leave to myself is my private life. I never understood people sharing very intimate personal details,  things that are very biological in nature and often gross. I do it as a rule, not that it's either scandalous or exciting. You will never see a nude picture of me floating  on someone's cell or internet because I never took one and I never will. My thoughts, feelings and experiences are a different issue. I don't think that exposing myself emotionally makes me vulnerable. I think it makes me human.

But I think it's only fair that people know more about me if they are to trust me. Being an attorney is a relationship built on trust after all.  If anybody is to consider hiring me in any capacity they deserve to see where I'm coming from and what I'm about. If they open up to me, I'll open up to them. And I think honesty pays off in real life.  People trust what they can understand. To anybody who cares, this is who I am and these are the things I care about. And this is why you should care as well. I'd rather be as real as I can be than to invent a suit and ties persona for myself. Hopefully, someone will appreciate me for who I am. Lies and omissions tend to catch up with you anyway. 

Perhaps, dare I say it- I can give somebody hope. Maybe I can change your mind, show you how painfully normal I am, influence how you see disability. Maybe you can see how important upbringing is and how what we do as children often directly connects to how we are as adults. Luckily, we can all blame our parents for whatever flaw we find in ourselves ;) Maybe you can stop and think about what I put up with every day, what it's like to get up and be in my shoes and wheelchair for 33 years and counting. Maybe you can see my good intentions. This is me, come find me in my world. And I can only be myself.

Cerebral Palsy and me

"It's been holding you back for so long. Let it help you once by landing you a job"- said my mom after I told her that I'm trying to talk to some non profits and entities that deal with disability causes. An ideal fit for me would be a place where I can use not only my law licences, but my lifetime experience in a wheelchair. I want to help people and I want to be useful. But I have never blamed my life for not being able to walk. You can say, you can't really miss something you have never truly experienced, but that would have been too simplistic. I live in a world where people jump, run and dance.  Walk up the stairs and jaywalk in the middle of the street. It's not that I don't see that and it's not that I don't feel left behind when my friends get to do all the things I was never able to. You feel different just being around it sometimes and it's when you see yourself reflected in others eyes when it finally hits you. But I have never wondered who would I be if I wasn't born with Cerebral Palsy. Possibly, an entirely different person, because so many things that happen to us shape who we are and we can't just pick and choose the things that we like. I guess, I'd be a Virgo not a Cancer as I was expected to arrive in the Fall and not in the middle of Summer. My mom tends to think that I owe my drive and intelligence to my disability. Because I couldn't walk, I stayed at home and read a lot. Reading and writing were my main  hobbies when I was little and I attempted to write a sequel to every book I got my hands on.  She also points out that a lot of kids from my neighborhood would get in all kinds of trouble. Some ended up hurt or in prison. Staying put kept me away from bad company.

Having Cerebral Palsy gave me an unusual childhood. I got to travel abroad to Budapest when my classmates went to school every day. Because of that I've learned Hungarian. and developed an ear for languages As a result I picked up English pretty easily from watching Sky One-the British TV channel on cable every day. No question, I would not be speaking it as fluently today. Just compare it to my failed attempts to study German the traditional way, at school for seven years. I'm in America today, because I speak English well enough to be an attorney. My disability affected everyone in our  household to the extent that it'd be really hard to predict who and where it would be if I was born healthy. My mom quit her job and stayed at home, which meant she not only took care of me but watched my brother as well as he was going through his teen years. Her influence pushed us both to get good grades and then go to college. To pay for the years in the Peto institute my parents had to look for extra money. My father and later my mother ended up leaving for months at the time to find jobs in the mythical West.  The additional income allowed us to get things no one in our neighborhood had seen before in the mid/ late 1980's- like a VCR or a stereo system with a CD player. Most importantly,my parents got my brother an Atari, that sparked his passion for computers that later became his career. Something we would never be able to afford otherwise.  My mom seems to think that there's a reason for why I  am the way I am. As much as I'd like to believe I'm not sure if it's a grand design or a comedy of errors. Some twisted paths lead me here. Yet,it'd be silly of me not to notice that my premature arrival shaped the fates of not only me but parents and my brother. In her 40's my mom reentered the work force with our help- at 14 I was teaching her how to use a computer- and may I add with great success. Would it be possible if she had never left? We were all in this together. And I have never wished for a different life. I'm not even sure if I would like the other version of myself. Some of the things I enjoy about myself the most, how sensitive I am, how social, my humor, were all shaped by a chain of events that brought me to Gainesville. Some people with CP find strength in faith or a sense of mission.  I want to help people, but I don't feel I'm a martyr. I just like who I am.

Alcohol, boundaries and wheelchairs

I never understood why people would drink more than they can handle. And I see it a lot in Gainesville. Is it really that much fun to lose dinner along with your dignity on a lawn on your way back to the car? Are the people I see at the local bars and clubs on a mission not to remember anything in the morning? Let me be clear: I'm not against drinking. From time to time I go out with friends as well. But the key to having fun is knowing your limits. I know I need to get home safely, I want to make new fond memories, not erase them- and above all, at all times I have to be respectable. The problem is, a lot of times others don't extend the same courtesy to me. I grew up in Poland. Without perpetuating any negative stereotypes I need to point out that alcohol is very present in our culture, or at least was as I remember it. But I never really drunk until I moved to Gainesville. Here, it became a thing to do when you're out and about with friends. A social lubricant if only it's a glass you hold in your hand for an hour until the ice melts. Still, having grown up in Poland I have not seen as many people acting entirely out of control as I do  in America. And it becomes a problem if they lose all boundaries and with their motor skills incredibly impaired try to approach me.

I've touched on it before in my text about safety. But it's not so much that I'm scared what they will do. I'm not in fear of getting punched or beaten. Incredibly drunk people throw all social conventions out the window. They invade my personal space enough. And there's no good way out of this, because as much as I know they mean me no harm, they're really beyond understanding that I don't appreciate it. It's bad enough that a friend who candidly admitted he's been drinking beer for 10 hours last Saturday starts to hug me and apologize for the odd things he thought he has done to me, as I tried to loosen his grip while trying to calm his crying. At least that was somebody I somewhat knew. Earlier in the week I decided to join my friends for a night of karaoking. It was quite a mistake. An older, large  man who clearly had one too many about an hour before I got there while twirling in his own world when he spotted me by the bar. He then decided I needed to dance and attempted to pool me to the floor. Or turn my chair around. Or pet me on the head. The bartender clearly didn't have the situation under control, when I turned to her asking for help. She did say "He doesn't want to be bothered" calmly and then continued to serve him. And he didn't listen. Tried multiple times, as if he didn't hear us or care or try to convince me that I should.

  I didn't want to be bothered. I didn't want to be moved. I didn't want to dance. In a situation like that I'm really powerless. If he was a little less drunk I could've reasoned with him, I could've used my wit. With somebody that drunk and heavy, I'm really out of options. My "air-light" carbon fiber titanium wheelchair flips easily  with a bit of force from the outside Some of my friends got really upset saying that if only they were there they wouldn't let this go on. If only. But they weren't. When you're in a wheelchair you can't really walk away or otherwise get further from a person that grabs you.  And no one around is interested in getting a big guy off your back. I was very upset, so I left the bar early. As I rolled home I noticed from across the street that the man was attempting to get into his car and drive it. If my phone was working I would have called the police. The oddity of this situation is that I'm sure he didn't mean to be annoying. He didn't mean to invade my personal space. I bet he'd be pretty embarrassed had he known how disrespectful he was.  I'm sure he just wanted to have fun and he tried to have others enjoy themselves as well. He probably thought: Everybody should dance. But the end result was just the same. I was stuck with a drunk person who didn't realize their own strength, who didn't act in any predictable manner, with no help from outside and no tools to defend myself.