“What’s Wrong With You?”
Here is something I wrote summarizing my experience growing up with Spina Bifida. I see parents in here asking questions all the time and maybe this will sort of give you a new perspective
“What’s Wrong With You?”
They asked it
before I even knew
what the question meant.
“What’s wrong with him?”
Spoken softly beside grocery carts,
doctor’s offices,
school hallways—
as if I couldn’t hear it
just because I was small.
And my parents stood between me and that question
like a shield, saying:
“Nothing.
He’s like any other kid.”
And I was.
I laughed too loud.
Got dirt on my shoes at recess.
Struggled through homework.
Wanted friends.
Wanted to belong.
But children notice difference
the way sharks smell blood in water.
So eventually
the question reached me directly.
“What’s wrong with you?”
And the cruelest part was
I never had an answer.
Because I wasn’t crying.
Wasn’t fighting.
Wasn’t broken on the classroom floor.
I was just existing
in a body people needed explained.
Then came anger.
Teenage anger.
The kind born from chaos at home,
from feeling stuck while everyone else moved forward.
The kind that grows in silence
when your life keeps getting decided for you.
Held back.
Redirected.
Managed.
And for the first time in my life,
something actually was wrong.
But nobody asked then.
Not really.
Not when I was drowning in directionless noise.
Not when rage became easier than grief.
Not when I needed someone to look past the disability
and ask about the human being carrying it.
Funny how that works.
People questioned my existence
before they questioned my pain.
Then adulthood arrived
and I tried to heal.
Exercise.
Poetry.
Art.
Anything to keep my mind from becoming
a locked room with no windows.
And somehow
“What’s wrong with you?”
came back again.
As if healing looked suspicious.
As if trying to become whole
was offensive to people
who preferred me easier to define.
And now?
Now I have stability.
A career I care about.
People who love me.
A life I fought hard to build.
And still that phrase echoes
like a smoke alarm with dying batteries.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Sometimes from strangers.
Sometimes from people close to me.
Sometimes from my own reflection.
After a while
the question stops sounding like curiosity.
It starts sounding like accusation.
Like existing differently
must mean existing incorrectly.
And maybe that’s the real wound.
Not the disability.
Not the anger.
Not the years spent feeling behind.
Just the exhausting feeling
of constantly being treated
like your humanity came with an asterisk.
But I think I’m finally learning something.
Maybe the question was never mine to carry.
Maybe all these years
people looked at anything unfamiliar,
anything resilient,
anything they couldn’t immediately categorize
and called it “wrong.”
Not because it was broken.
But because they didn’t understand it.