Disability and Onlyness

Tennyson wrote, "tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all". At least to lose love means you found it in the first place; you know the joy of that discovery, you've found yourself worthy of its possession, you have been the entire focus of another person and you know the feeling of returning their loving gaze.

Spare a thought for those who are closed off from love; whose life-long and now emerging disabilities have crowded out the capacity to generate such joy. This is the heaviest burden of disability: the greater potential for physical and emotional isolation and having the disability as your only daily companion. It gets in the way, causing you to trip over yourself as you set off on the journey towards someone. 

This is an important, yet mostly hidden away, part of the dialogue with disability...