There was a woman
that I was dating
and um, she told me,
--and this was the first time I ever questioned my disability
and the impact it had on my social life--
she said "Helen, I um, can't be with you 100%.
I do love you, I do care for you,
but I can't be with you 100%"
And I said "why?"
She would never say it.
I said "because of my disability?"
She said "yes".
So I felt like, felt at that point,
that if she was honest enough to tell me that,
then most people are thinking that,
that I'm only gonna give her but so much
_as she's going to be able to give me.
Um, so, it's real difficult.
It's real difficult.
I mean, yeah I meet women,
I love women, I love beautiful women,
but when I started to see that it's not, this is not for me,
I'm just going to y'know let you go
and that's just about mine,
I have no problems with that,
but I think that the black, black women, or black lesbians, or whatever you wanna call us,
we are fearful of the unknown.
To look at me, you don't know what this is.
So you're afraid of it,
cause you're not familiar with it.
So it makes you more, um,
you know, when we are afraid of things,
we try to stay away from them,
instead of trying to, to get the knowledge of what that is,
or what that person is,
or what that disability is,
or why that person is the way they are.
So we have a tendency to run away from things that are unfamiliar and that we're afraid of.