Again, for my followers, every day I check what national day it is and raise awareness to the ones that I believe fall into my line of work or my life. Today it is International Day of Persons with Disabilities.

Through my whole life I have grown up with an uncle that has mental disabilities. Also known as being mentally handicapped – I don’t particularly like that phrase though.

Now even though he’s not physically disabled as such (well as he’s got older he has problems with his hip), you can tell he has a disability which is fine. From studies we know people who have mental disabilities sometimes don’t know they have them. Well my uncle does.

As my uncle knows he’s “different” (hate that word too), he’s grown up with anxiety and depression with that. Now let me take you back to a time, story time as such.

When I was 13 years old, I was in the line waiting to go in to sit my gcse. Yes, I was fast tracked. God knows why! Anyways, a girl came up to me and said your uncles on Facebook. Now my uncle went down the local library and had Facebook so that didn’t concern me. No, she didn’t mean that. She meant someone had posted a photo of him.

The photo of him was in the library on the computer, without his knowledge or consent. Captioned: this weirdo is talking to himself haha.

Now let’s just say, I failed my exam that day. I was so angry. I’m the type of person that if something annoys me, I can’t let it drop.

So when I got out of that exam, what was the most rationale thing to do as a 13 year old? Comment on the photo explaining it’s my uncle with difficulties. Now the two girls that posted it, they got massive backlash. From around 3 different senior schools. Her parents even got involved and apologised to my family.

Moral of the story? Only because someone has a disability or maybe it’s invisible to some (or all), they are a human being. They are just like anyone else. Don’t be mean, don’t treat them different and treat them with the respect you’d like to be treated with.

I’ll dedicate this day from me, to my uncle.