Fukama Fukaba

One morning, I decided to take this family on a dreamlike journey. They were truly exhausted from everything: exhausted from caring for me, from facing a society that rejects any form of difference, exhausted from trying to accept me and themselves as the family of a person with a disability, and exhausted from wondering who would care for me after they were gone.

I decided to speak to them in their complex language, hoping they might see the glimmer of light hidden behind the disability that had been ingrained in my mind since time immemorial.

The journey lasted long enough for me to express what I had wanted to express for forty years. Sarah thought she was dreaming, Hannah thought an alien had disguised itself as me, and my father thought I had been playing the role of “mentally disabled” for all those forty years.

My mother came running towards me, welcoming her son who had been away for so long. I told them that all the talk about being “normal” didn’t concern me, that I wouldn’t be happier being anyone else, and that I wasn’t unhappy being who I was. On the contrary, being a person with an intellectual disability is what makes me a human being created by God in the best of forms.

The journey ended as it began, like a dream—a dream full of mysteries and lessons, a dream from which the family members awoke as completely different people.