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When I was 11, I went cliff jumping with my family into the bone-chilling waters of Lake Superior. As I stood at the edge of the precipice, with the wind howling for me to jump alongside the accompaniment of my family, I subconsciously knew that it was a bad idea for my feet to leave the ground, but… I jumped anyway. As the cold of the water pierced my skin, all I could think about was the rush of adrenaline. But as I climbed onto the jagged rocks above, trying to catch my breath, I suddenly realized something else happened as I crashed through the water: I had lost ALL of the vision in my left eye. As I scrambled up the rocks, I kept trying to think of what to do. How did this happen? It’ll go away, right? It’s normal. All these thoughts rushed through my head, and as I stumbled onto the path, I contemplated if I should tell someone. I decided not to tell anyone. “It will be better tomorrow,” I told myself as I jumped off the cliff again. The next day, it didn’t get better, and over the next year I kept telling myself, “It will be better tomorrow.” I suppressed the idea that anything was wrong; not seeing out of my left eye was my new normal. A year later was my next doctor’s appointment, when the doctors told me that I needed surgery. I was terrified, but I also thought it would be cool to have surgery and a scar on my eye. But after the first surgery, the novelty wore off very quickly. After the first two weeks lying face down and not being able to move my head, after the first thousand or so eye drops, the idea didn’t become as much fun. Over the course of the next year and a half, I would endure four surgeries on my left eye and two for my right, all to hopefully hold on to the minimal vision that I learned I had. Before that year, I thought my vision was like everyone else’s. I just had to wear my glasses to access it. My vision is now the equivalent of nothing in my left eye while looking through a straw in my right.
Before then, no one knew I was disabled, not because I didn’t want them to know, but because I myself didn’t know. While I was diagnosed with a genetic disorder called Marfan syndrome, it had no impact on my life. The only thing that happened was that I had to wear glasses, but I was able to do everything with everyone else: skiing, school, and everything in between. So I consider it a blessing that I didn’t know about my disability until that fateful day when I was older…
After learning about my vision loss is when I was introduced to para sport, which I believe has been another great blessing in my life. While I wasn’t able to compete at the time I was introduced, I now had a new pathway for my life: my skiing. As I kept competing on my able-bodied team, I felt lost. While everyone had their own goals, mine were so vastly different from my teammates’. In that moment, I got sucked back to those first days after jumping: suppress it, hide it, because just a year earlier I thought I was identical to my teammates around me, so standing out scared me.
While I have now been able to embrace this pathway with the help of my brother guiding me, it has taken me a long time to get here. I have had to learn how to embrace my disability because, while I knew my story was taking me to a different place than my teammates, they didn’t know it till this past year. I have had to show everyone that there is strength in my disability. While they might not comprehend the extent of my vision loss, they now see someone who is just as capable, starting to achieve greatness.
The past year has shown me that I have strength in each of my firsts this past year, whether that be my first time skiing with a guide, my first para race, or my first Paralympic Games. I have learned so much from each. And while I know this is just the beginning of my athletic career, I feel it’s so much bigger than my sport. It’s about showing that little girl who is scared to stand out, who feels they have to suppress a part of them, that they are not alone, that there is strength in vulnerability and success in embracing your story.
— Meg Gustafson · U.S. Paralympic Team
