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There was a woman

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that I was dating

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and um, she told me,

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--and this was the first time I ever questioned my disability

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and the impact it had on my social life--

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she said "Helen, I um, can't be with you 100%.

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I do love you, I do care for you,

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but I can't be with you 100%"

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And I said "why?"

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She would never say it.

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I said "because of my disability?"

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She said "yes".

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So I felt like, felt at that point,

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that if she was honest enough to tell me that,

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then most people are thinking that,

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that I'm only gonna give her but so much

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<u>_</u>as she's going to be able to give me.

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Um, so, it's real difficult.

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It's real difficult.

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I mean, yeah I meet women,

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I love women, I love beautiful women,

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but when I started to see that it's not, this is not for me,

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I'm just going to y'know let you go

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and that's just about mine,

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I have no problems with that,

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but I think that the black, black women, or black lesbians, or whatever you wanna call us,

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we are fearful of the unknown.

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To look at me, you don't know what this is.

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So you're afraid of it,

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cause you're not familiar with it.

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So it makes you more, um,

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you know, when we are afraid of things,

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we try to stay away from them,

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instead of trying to, to get the knowledge of what that is,

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or what that person is,

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or what that disability is,

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or why that person is the way they are.

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So we have a tendency to run away from things that are unfamiliar and that we're afraid of.