People who have faked a disability, what made you stop?

The Road to Discovery

Going to a ghetto school was like walking onto a battlefield of different diseases. You see, parents didn’t want to have to pay to feed their kids lunch. So, staying at home sick from school was just not a thing. And one day, when a girl coughed on me, I chose not to wash my hands. This one decision ended up ruining the rest of my life.

In just a week, I had gone from having a mild sore throat to barely being able to stand without losing my breath. My parents poured all their savings into hospital bills. They were the same people who once told me that they weren’t going to buy me dinner because I could just eat a lot during the free lunch at school.

It was a race against time to keep me alive. It got so bad that we were forced to ask neighbors for money. Suddenly everyone was helping out, not just with donations, but hospital visits and gifts, too.

My bedside was filled with flowers, chocolates, and all the childhood toys I never had. I’m embarrassed to say that some small part of me almost didn’t want to get better from pneumonia.

Unfortunately, my wish came true. Instead of recovering properly, I felt super dizzy, lethargic, and could barely stand. After months in the hospital, I was officially diagnosed with a disability that included not being able to walk for the rest of my life. I tried to be optimistic, to tell myself all I had to do was give myself some time to adjust.

My plan for positivity ended up being crushed to the ground. A few days after going back home, I woke up to the sound of my parents throwing everything I owned into boxes and bin bags.

“We’re moving!” they exclaimed as if it wasn’t completely out of the blue.

“Um, what?”

“We don’t want to hear it, Zoe”. “We deserve a fresh start after all the you put us through”.

Their sudden tone change was so abrupt, it completely caught me off guard. I felt too scared to say anything else, so I just nodded my head. In just a few days, I found myself sitting in a wheelchair in the back of my parents’ van, driving all the way from our home in LA to Salt Lake City.

I didn’t even know how I was going to attend school or what my life would look like as a disabled. Turns out my parents had already made those decisions for me. With all the donations for my illness, they were able to send me to a private high school.

In my first month, everyone was gushing over me in the wheelchair, calling me brave and inspiration. Apparently my parents had informed the entire school of what had happened.

At first, the attention was cool. Sort of made me feel like a badass. But after the first three days, I got sick of telling the story of what had happened. I just wanted to go back to being invisible, a recluse.

Mom, things are really hard right now.

I tried to confide in her later that day with tears in my eyes.

Hard? You don’t even know what hard is. Me and your father have given up everything for you.

She was screaming so hard I thought her vein in her forehead was going to explode. So, I wheeled myself to my bedroom and cried my eyes out. Part of me just wanted everything to go away. But mostly, I just felt guilty.

So from there, I hid everything behind fake smiles and pretend laughter. It was as if my entire life hadn’t been flipped upside down. When my mom gave me my medication in the morning, I’d tell her how grateful I was for everything that had happened. I’d say I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Whenever they posted me on Facebook, I would insist on changing into a yellow t-shirt so I’d look brighter. I just wanted to be the daughter they’d always wanted instead of a burden. And for a while, it worked. I watched as my dad hugged my mom a little tighter. My mom kissed my dad a little longer. It was like all my happiness had been traded in for theirs.

So one morning, when my parents weren’t home and the medication accidentally fell out of my pocket and into the toilet bowl, the last thing I wanted to do was tell them. That’s how I spent my morning wheeling myself to the pharmacy to get a medication refill. Except my Saab story didn’t work on her. She just looked extremely confused.

“Honey, this medication is Ace Promisine, a tranquilizer used to sedate animals, mostly dogs or horses”. “It would never be prescribed to treat any kind of human disability”.

I felt sick to my stomach.

“Um, okay, but can you please just refill them?” I asked, hoping that she didn’t know what she was talking about.

Over the next few days, I pretended to take the medication. As soon as my mom walked out, I’d spit it out into my pillowcase. “I don’t know what I was looking for, but I just knew I had this nagging feeling that wasn’t going away”.

In just two weeks, I was able to stand from my wheelchair for the first time since I was hospitalized all those years ago. My pneumonia was never the reason I couldn’t walk. It was always my parents. They’ve been drugging me for years. The donations, the attention, the sympathy, it all made horrible sense.

But why?