Sorry for the delay! I had to go eat.
First a little background: I'm 23, Canadian in a semi-rural area with my parents. I graduated on the Dean's List from a 3 year legal admin program. Currently looking for work, just applied somewhere yesterday. Failed in May 2015 to get approved for hand controls in a car for driving but after fighting with the government for about 8 months I have a 2nd chance with a new driver rehab place. Had one lesson there, it went well. Have another Tuesday. It's expensive as hell, $600 for the first one, $170 each for the next ones, they want me to do 10 lessons at least. Luckily I can afford it, but its another reason I need a job.
You say you just see your new girlfriend and not the CP. That is good, but it has drawbacks when you are growing up. The author of the kink story and I both grew up in overprotective families. I wasn't even allowed to bring my Pokemon cards to school for fear someone would steal them from me. I'm an only child so I got most of the things I wanted, but risk of any kind was off the table.
My parents and other family just see me as me and love me. But it was difficult to realize the majority of the world sees what's wrong with my legs before anything else. I'm still not sure whose idea it was but starting from age 12 in Grade 7 I was forced to use a Walker at school. The reason I was given was because it would help me navigate crowded halls safely and have a basket to carry by book. While the basket did help with that and it cleared my path, it pretty much cleared most people away from me altogether. I was always a quiet kid and knew I couldn't run as fast as the others and had a physical therapist, but I though it was just more like an extra doctor. When I got the Walker that's when I realized how 'wrong' my body was. Not even a teenager yet and I looked like a senior citizen.
Of course, age 12 is right when you start to get an inkling of who you want to be as an adult and your classmates start pairing up. I was left out of that talk. The sad part is I didn't blame them. Masculinity is tied to the idea of strength. What girl or woman wants someone whose body was born broken? I knew these pairings weren't real relationships but I also knew I can't "grow out" of my CP. So the mantra "people change" when they get older was a nasty little joke to me. I can't change out of this. It felt like my family and everyone else I trusted lied to me. Saying I was such a nice kid/person, what's the point in all that if I was flawed from birth? My older relatives used to tease me as a little kid saying when I get older girls would be callng the house for me. When I became Walker Freak that all seemed like it was set up to mock me. I was the only physically disabled kid at my school not in Special Ed. I took Sex Ed like everyone else but privatly thought it was useless to me. People like me still aren't represented in media. I knew no adults like myself and only occasionally saw people like me in passing at physical therapy. I felt so alone. I spent every day from ages 12-17 pushing around a reminder of how ugly I was.
I had a few meltdowns when I first became Walker Freak but then my mother almost died from a stroke. She survived thankfully but is now on a bunch of pills for the rest of her life, including for seizures. I shut up about the Walker then for fear an argument about it could kill my mother. I just carried the misery thinking it was normal from now on.
As a kid I only had 1 close friend, a girl. We were both outcasts with the other kids, a few years ago she was diagnosed with OCD but she unknowingly had it all her life. I sometimes wonder if her OCD and my CP drew us together as the 'different' ones before we knew what our conditions meant. When I get the Walker and my Mom almost died, girls our age were approaching her for friendship, but not me. I now know she just wanted more friends but at the time 12 year old me thought she was rejecting me as Walker Freak too. We didn't speak for a few years until Grade 12 where we got thrown into one class together and became civil again. The same year I grow tired of trying to tell myself relationships/sex doesn't matter and has a trusted cousin sneak me a self-help book on sexuality and disability from Amazon. It let my start healing my self-esteem and showed me a few biases I didn't even realize I had.
Jump ahead to 2014 and she asks me if we could start dating. My own feelings had been brewing so I said yes. I was happy for a few months. So was she. But she broke up with me, she hated hurting me and swore it was her issues of not feeling ready and OCD stuff. I was hurt pretty bad but we don't hate each other, and am past wanting her back.
Jump ahead to about two months ago, I was trying to figure out more of who I am. I read a story around hear that really woke me up to what I want. I've been hanging around /r/BDSMCommunity ever since. Having CP and being kinky are not a guarantee, your girl could be totally vanilla for all I know and be turned of by any kink. But that place is filled with great people who help strangers with deep personal problems and share in their victories. Other then attracting me, its also practical because the vanilla world doesn't recognize people like me as wanting/needing sex or being viable partners. And logistically some common things are going to be uncomfortable for me legs so I need different ideas.
No, Fifty Shades is not BDSM, its romanticized abuse. No, BDSM is not about orgies, that's more of a swinger thing. Casual hookups usually don't happen in among healthy kinksters as communication and consent are vital to us. Yes, some people can claim to be like us and abuse their partners, but abuse happens in the mainstream world as well. If anything, kinksters are way more aware of the signs of abuse and watch out for each other more.
Now, my main barrier for romance and friendships is getting to people and getting to know them. Its embarrassing to rely on parents for rides but in the semi-rural area, their is no transit. I'm working on the hand controls again but it might no happen in which case I'll have to move out eventually which brings us back to a job and money.
Even if I had that worked out, I suck at small talk. My negative experience has killed my enthusiasm for meeting new people, I don't know how to do it. I mumble or stutter or talk to fast around strangers making me more self-conscious on top of my leg concerns. Also INFJs are very, very private and only open up to a select few. I'm doing it here easily but because you are just text on a screen I can block if I have too. Don't it in person with someone who could affect my life is scary. I'm stuck but trying to improve.
That was longer then I thought! thanks for reading this far. If you have any general advice for me, I'll gladly read it. If you want to talk to your girlfriend about disability issues show her the videos and lesbian story I linked, and then maybe this. She might totally disagree with me, CP effects all different types of people, but maybe she can relate to parts of it too. I could take advice for