I’m Special Read Free

had to. That’s just the way things work now. This is what happens when you’re a part of a generation that’s raised by parents who don’t want you to ever know struggle: you get a bunch of people in their twenties who never bothered to figure out how to live.

    Most people my age were born under joyous circumstances: surrounded by family in the delivery room, someone gleefully capturing the birth with a video camera while everyone else crowds around the elated mother as she greets this blob of flesh for the first time. My birth, on the other hand, was an American Horror Story. The second I came out of my mother’s vagina, I was blue and my brain was dying from lack of oxygen. The doctors told my parents that they had no way to predict the extent of my mental and physical impairments. There was no celebratory cake, no tender kisses—just pure “what the fuck just happened to our lives?” panic.
    For the first few years, my parents lived in constant agony, not knowing if I was going to end up a total vegetable, let alone what other problems I was going to have. I didn’t start walking until I was almost four years old, but apparently I’ve always been verbal. “You’d talk to anyone,” my mom tells me. “You wouldn’t shut up. It was hard to find it annoying, though, because it meant that your brain was actually working!” Gee, if you think about it, cerebral palsy is an ironclad defense for being a pest. “Mom and Dad, you need to put up with me because I could’ve been the human equivalent of a blank page!”
    I wish I could say I was an easygoing, disabled butterfly who understood all the hardships my parents faced in raising a child with cerebral palsy, but I wasn’t. In fact, I tortured them. They just made it so easy for me—especially my mom. “Ryan, let me wipe your face. Ryan, let me tie your shoes. Ryan, let me climb into your lungs and breathe for you because the thought of you having to do anything at all brings me such great pain.” My entire generation was put under the care of a bunch of adults who would gladly frame their child’s first solid bowel movement and shower them with accolades any time they didn’t scream “FUCK YOU!” in their faces, so obviously the natural inclination was doubled when my mom gave birth to a kid who actually needed her permanent attention. I was fucked! She was fucked! My two siblings, who had been the king and queen of the castle until my high-maintenance ass showed up, were fucked!
    Fearing that my mother and I were going to turn into a modern version of Grey Gardens , my father took it upon himself to become the anti–helicopter parent. With my mom, I always found a way out of doing something I didn’t want to do, but my dad’s bullshit detector was indestructible. He was immune to my manipulation and made sure I couldn’t get away with anything, no matter how hard I protested or made my limp more pronounced. But whenever my dad laid down the law, my mother would try to lift it immediately. Take chores, for example. I’m pretty spastic, so sometimes when I would do something like use a broom at seven years old, I’d make an even bigger mess than there was to begin with. Instead of letting me just give up on it like everyone else would, my father would make sure I learned how to do it right—that is, until my mother would come waltzing in.
    â€œWhat is this, Dennis?” my mom would bark, her face melting into a pool of sympathy as she saw me hopelessly trying to clean up something I had spilled on the floor.
    â€œI’m teaching him how to use a broom, Karen!” my father would yell back. “He doesn’t know how. Can you believe it?”
    â€œMommy,” I would whimper, “I can’t do it. It’s too hard, and Dad won’t let me go until it’s finished.”
    â€œDid you hear that, Dennis? He can’t