I’ve always thought I was fortunate to have not suffered from intense anxieties and insecurities in my teens. Granted, there have been times where I thought I looked fat or any of the other standard moments of self-criticism, but generally speaking, I was happy with who I was and what I looked like. The only thing I ignored in order to continue being comfortable in my own skin was how I look when I walk. I didn’t look when I walked past shop windows or any reflective surfaces, and I asked friends to delete videos where you could see me walking; I just didn’t need to know what that image looked like.

So naturally, when my university friends were like ‘do you want to do the college fashion show and walk on a stage in front of hundreds of people and have the whole process videoed and posted on social media for even more people to see?’, my reaction was ‘uhhh no, not really’. But the second I told them why I didn’t fancy doing that, I got bombarded with accusations of hypocrisy because as they quite rightly pointed out, I can’t be on here sporting for diversity and inclusion if I’m not going to practice what I preach. Thus, I took my disabled arse up onto a pretty big stage and I stomped along it in front of hundreds of people. And I even did a walk in my underwear lol, since if you’re gunna do it, you may as well go all-out, right?

I’ve said many times before that I don’t know if I’m proud to be disabled, and that a lot of what society encourages me to do is to blend in; I’m told by the abstract powers that be that I should shut up and get on with it, and try my utmost to pass as able-bodied to get by. I know that I don’t love being physically disabled – it’s a bit of a pain – but I am disabled, and I don’t want to change that because god knows what I’d be like if I wasn’t. However, the way I feel about myself doesn’t change the fact that society rarely gives me examples of a disabled body being deemed as beautiful without there being some subtext of pity. And even though I’ve got an ego, I can’t say I’ve got a burning desire to use my body to change the way people understand disability. But I would like to trust that strangers could find me interesting, and clever, and sexy, knowing full well that I’m physically disabled; that they won’t go from respecting me to patronising me the second they hear my medical history.

What I’ve recognised though, is that I can’t keep blaming the abstract idea of what ‘society’ thinks for my insecurities. Yes, disabled people might not be plastered all over billboards and well-represented in films and TV, and yes, disability might be something the world wants to hide away and forget about. But when it comes to individual people, I’ve met so many people of all ages and backgrounds who accept me as interesting, clever, and sexy partly because I’m disabled. So maybe it’s a me problem; maybe I’m the only one who’s judging the way I walk and the shoes I wear.