Special-ity

So, at nearly twenty-seven years old, after five years in the US Army, a helluva lot of experience, and many other jobs.... I've finally figured out my purpose in life, and, more specifically, what I want to be when I grow up.
I want to be a teacher.
I don't want to be just any teacher, though- I want to teach children with special needs.
I'm not a mother- I cannot conceive children the natural way, due to a very particular kind of abuse in my own childhood. I was born to two parents, who were married, healthy and stable for all intensive purposes. That's how it was then, but so much has changed.
My mother remarried a lawyer with post-polio-induced quadriplegia, who turned out to be the most stable adult in my life. His little brother had been born with Down Syndrome, but managed to dodge the crippling wrath of polio. They were the two most incredible men I've ever been blessed to love.
I have been diagnosed with non-combat related Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I have a complex, chronic variety- and some of it stems from the reasons I have my own experience with foster care, frequent hospitalizations and special education. I have a service dog who is very friendly, very pretty, very sweet, and the reason I continue to have hope.
I love children. I've been a nerd my whole life- and never enjoyed school because I didn't learn the way "NORMAL" kids did. I have hated that word my entire life- normal. Ugh.
My uncle was the happiest person I know- and I'd put money on the fact that he couldn't have defined the word normal if it would save someone's life.
My stepdaddy was the smartest man I know- and he was visibly different, and had no qualms about putting his, er, "quirky" sense of humor  on full display every chance he got. He simply lived- no questions, no arguments, no excuses. He drove his family crazy from the relative comfort of his wheelchair, until his mother pushed him to go to school- with no use of his hands, arms or legs. He did, and learned to type with a long metal stick with a rubber tip. He also scared the daylights out of the children who attempted to get just a little too close to his face staring at "the strange man in a big chair" and smoked- a lot. That man was out-of-control funny, and always lived as he believed. He's still my hero.
I had a large number of labels, medications, treatments, doctors and tests as a child. LARGE! Shortly before my 21st birthday, and two years after an "elective" tubal ligation, I learned that all of these labels were wrong. I learned that the 37 medications I'd been on were all unnecessary and the words I'd once found comforting- "It's not your fault"- were actually a tool of dominance, and not of nurture.
And, many years and experiences later, I am more independent, responsible and mature than many people twice my age.
I have had the blessing of coming into contact, in some way, shape or form with people with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Post-Polio Syndrome, deafness, Down Syndrome, various auto-immune disorders, various levels and types of Post-Traumatic Stress and Traumatic Brain Injury, Cerebral Palsy and various other physical, mental, emotional and behavioral disorders. These are the people who see different aspects of the world than just what the media puts on display, the ones who have lived the life based on treating others as you would want to be treated- because these are the people who's experience of being treated as they'd treat others is substantially magnified each and every time they interact with someone who is not part of their every day life, and even sometimes when they are.
I want to be surrounded by the only people I really feel I belong with, my community- those of us with visible and invisible disabilities, those of us who have struggles that nobody would expect or understand unless they were part of this community or were very close to us. I want to help others, especially younger people who still are learning their abilities, strengths, weaknesses, differences, and, most of all, potential.
My first special ed teachers still stand out in my mind- they were far more open to explaining the diversity they'd experienced to us than any other teachers we had, be it racial, experiential, or anything else within reason. I was the only girl in my class- I was in the "behavioral" special needs class- and my teachers and I had a unique relationship because of that. I was the wild card who inevitably told the boys to shut up and listen. I was the one who got payback for being tripped, tackled and taunted when the teachers "just happened" to be looking away.
I want the opportunity to help someone the way I was helped- and to be around the children who understand what it means to be themselves and accept others as they are.
So, I know what I want to be when I grow up. Go figure.