Simon      

Tell me when you first realised that you were the kind of person that would have been called ‘handicapped’ back in the day.

Craig

It suppose it has to be when I noticed people started responding differently to me. Up until then l inhabited a safe place with people who had grown used to my difference. l have sketchy memories of being forced to deal with this new awareness.

Simon

So was that was that at school or was it earlier than that? Did you look at people around you and see that you were different?

Craig

I can recall a very specific moment. I can picture the classroom right now. If I close my eyes, I can see the classroom. I was in primary school. It was after I’d moved to Sussex, so I was I was older than six, but that’s all I am sure about. I remember that nobody wanted to sit next to me. And I was starting to get a bit of bullying, and one day the teacher stopped the class and called it out. But all I remember her saying was “he can do something that you can’t do”. He can touch his elbow with his hand, and you can’t do that. And all the class started trying to do it. I could tell that what she was trying to do was give me superpowers, but actually I felt like I was in the shop window. And so I felt two things at exactly the same time. I didn’t want that thing to happen, but I knew she had all the best intentions. So that was the very, very first time I can remember being aware that my different appearance set me apart. 

But then of course, there was a second helping which relates to my autism, which is an even bigger social issue for me than than my visible disability. And that was while I was listening to Saturday Live on Radio 4 in our kitchen in Sheffield. Again, I can picture it. I can picture exactly where I was sitting. It’s like a snapshot in my head. I was listening to the radio while I was making myself some breakfast. And all of a sudden I was listening to this person describing my life. And then I thought ‘I’ve got to know who this person is’. It was someone who was adjusting to living with an autism diagnosis, or Asperger’s as it was in those days. My mind was blown and I went upstairs and I found the online test and took it immediately. It blew my mind. Blew my world apart.

Simon

So you’ve had a visible disability, but then you’ve had this sense of something else. In video games where faces don’t quite work, they call it uncanny valley. You’ve been living in a kind of uncanny valley where the ways that neurotypical people communicate weren’t quite working for you, but you weren’t sure how or why that was happening.

Craig

For the first 52 years of my life.

Simon

Wow. And obviously today there’s much more awareness of both these issues in terms of trying to make life more accessible and the concept of atypical people having rights. That just wasn’t the case in the 1970s, was it? So has your understanding of yourself grown and changed as the country has developed and changed with regard to these issues?

Craig

I don’t think it has because my response to discovering I was different was very typical to the coping mechanisms of many of the disabled people I have met since. I was determined to become one of the ‘amazing’ group of people who could do everything anybody else could do. And this became part of my identity for the first 40 years of my life.

I was never part of any disabled community growing up. I went through mainstream school, passed the 11+ test, got into grammar school and never met another disabled person. Yes, I hated looking in a mirror, and was never involved in anything disability-related because my identity was based on what I could do. I was driven to show people I could do everything better than they could.

And that was probably something my mum instilled in me. But I also think it came from inside as well. I have got to prove myself. So I resisted every story that painted me as a victim. I never asserted myself. I just quietly got on with it. And I played the long game to be accepted into the mainstream.

Simon

And you became a Christian in your teens, is that right?

Craig

Yeah, early teens.

Simon

So how did that affect your understanding of yourself? First of all, when you were a young person. And then how has that evolved over time?

Craig

That’s a fascinating question because it’s all to do with the stories we tell ourselves – the story I told myself back then is a completely different story to the one I tell myself now. I hope the story I tell myself now is much more informed than the one that was going on in my head then. 

I was never happy or relaxed at school, and I was bullied. Not in a serious way, but it was just always there as an undercurrent. And there was a particular group of boys at my grammar school who just treated me differently. It turned out they were all Christians and they were safe to be with. And gradually I realised that there was a reason why they were different. They called themselves Christians, I felt safe in their presence and I wanted to go along to more and more things they were part of. The fact is that the only place they all met outside school was the church, so that was kind of how it happened. And then the statement “Jesus will be your friend” was a really, really powerful message. And so I now realise that what I responded to came from a deep need within me. To be affirmed and accepted.

Then it became a deeper question, Oh my goodness, this person Jesus is really, really amazing. So it became something I chose rather than something I needed to become part of.

I think so many of the choices I made and the stories I told myself back then were rooted in some deep psychological need. Which I wasn’t aware of at the time of course. Also my parents were going through an incredibly messy divorce. It was just horrendous, and so being away from home on Sunday, and on some evenings during the week, was convenient. So there were a whole lot of factors that went into what became my conversion story – but of course none of the deeper issues made it into my baptism testimony! So you can dress it up in whatever theological language you want to, but essentially much of the pressure came from a deep need within me that I was only beginning to recognise.

Simon

Yeah. And obviously one of the things that folk with disability or chronic illness have to deal with is the person of Jesus, and the fact that a significant part of his ministry involved healing. And certain parts of the church feel very strongly that this is a central part of the church’s ministry today, at least to pray for healing anyway. Lots and lots of feelings, but it’s still a very important thing and I know that you’ve been adjacent to and part of this section of the church. So what was that like?

to be continued…