Page 8 - CMTeen_Volume2_Issue1

Okay, Cupid

[Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from the book
“How Should a Body Be?”* by the CMTA’s
social media director, Bethany Meloche, who began
volunteering for the CMTA as a teenager.]

When I was 17—after years of research and preparation—I started attending Juniata College in the
snowy hills of Pennsylvania. I then turned my attention to an even more urgent matter. Namely, getting a
boyfriend. My approach to romance was not so different than my approach to any other goal: getting into
college, getting A’s, understanding my disease.

It required diligent research and a step-by-step strategy.
Trying to date on campus was quickly eliminated as an option. Juniata was known for being a majority
female college, with only 1600 students in the student body. So, with roughly 600 of them male, you can
assume that at least half of those 600 are taken, and another half of those would not meet my qualifica-
tions, and another half of those who wouldn’t consider me to meet their qualifications…

You get the picture. Pickings were slim. Add to that the fact that I didn’t have the energy—or the feet—
needed to socialize at parties. (At this point my feet hurt so badly when walking that I often skipped going
to the cafeteria for dinner so that I would be able to make it to lab the next morning.) I also assumed—
rightly or not—that the motorized wheelchair (although I preferred the term “scooter”) I needed to traverse
the campus might be an immediate turnoff.
I quickly settled on online dating.

I waited until my eighteenth birthday—you have to be eighteen to sign up; I would have started earlier if
I could—and immediately began my research: identifying prospects, taking notes, drafting the perfect first
messages.
There was one dilemma, which was how to approach my disease/disability/illness/injury/situation/what
have you. I saw three options:
A. Girl and boy meet for their first date. Surprise, wheelchair!
B. Girl first charms boy with her incredible personality through several messages or phone calls, and
then breaks the news.
C. Girl says what’s what on her profile.
Option A seemed bordering on deception, and both A or B offered the risk of to-my-face rejection.
And so I chose option C. Of course this meant many potential suitors could disqualify me immediately,
but… so what? I had to make that be okay in order to survive this already rejection-centric process.
I knew intellectually that it would be difficult to date someone with a disease/disability/illness/injury/

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