Josephine and the Love She Didn’t Think She Was Allowed to Want

Josephine spent a long time believing love had rules she wasn’t allowed to break.

She told herself she needed distance from disability to be safe. That loving someone who lived inside the same challenges she did would only magnify her struggles. She didn’t call it fear. She called it practicality. She didn’t call it shame. She called it realism.

But deep down, Josephine was afraid.

Afraid that loving someone with a disability meant the world would see her only through that lens. Afraid that it would confirm every quiet belief she had absorbed about limitation. Afraid that she would disappear inside a life that felt too heavy, too visible, too hard to explain.

So when love showed up wearing familiar shapes, Josephine hesitated.

Some loves stayed gentle and steady, teaching her that connection doesn’t always need romance to matter. Some loves asked more of her—patience, vulnerability, effort—and showed her that intimacy isn’t built on ease, but on willingness. And then there was the love that arrived slowly, quietly, after she had already done some healing.

That love didn’t ask her to run.
It didn’t ask her to hide.
It didn’t ask her to be less.

Josephine learned something she hadn’t expected:
The disability was never the problem.
The fear of being seen was.

Loving people who understood disability from the inside didn’t shrink her world. It gave her language for parts of herself she had kept silent. It softened places she had hardened for protection. It reminded her that shared understanding can be a kind of freedom.

Josephine once believed she needed to escape disability to be loved.
Now she knows the truth.

She didn’t need distance.
She needed honesty.

And with honesty came the kind of love that doesn’t demand proof — only presence.