Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
My name is Havva Selvihan Gür. I am 18 years old. I am studying at Erenköy High School. I live with my father.
Life is beautiful, everything is beautiful!
When I first started school there was nothing for me. No WCs, no ramps.
I had to go around the school to access my classroom.
Once the ramps were installed, the classroom became more proximate; it became much easier for me.
I became more active. In the past, I wasn’t leaving the classroom at all.
I used to ask for help from my friends all the time, from my female friends.
When going down the stairs, I used to get help from my male classmates.
I was constantly in need of others’ assistance.
But at the beginning of this year, as I was having difficulties,
I wrote a request for a suitable WC for me, which I would be able to use by myself.
The approval of my request was excellent progress.
For instance, when I wanted something I was asking my friends to fetch them for me from the cafeteria.
Now I go and get them myself.
Or when I needed the deputy principal I was sending my classmates.
The principal or the deputy principal was always coming to me.
Now I’ve started going to them. I am not dependent on others anymore; I can do things on my own.
I have finally become an individual. Not dependent on others anymore.
I became a model for the other disabled people who refuse to leave their houses.
It feels like telling them “look, I have done it, so can others”…
It is realized that it is not difficult at all.
Basketball is love itself for me. Just like people fall in love with each other,
I am in love with that ball, that court, basketball itself.
When I first started basketball, I was a novice. I knew nothing about basketball.
They found me on the street. How is that? Breathing deeply, I was pacing to my private course after school.
In front of the market, a man approached me running from the back, and he got hold of my arm.
He then asked me whether I wanted to take on basketball. He asked “do you want to play basketball?”
I said okay. But I thought they were going to make walk somehow and play basketball running.
A child’s mind, what do you expect, I was 14 then.
Of course that day I went straight up to my mum. I said a man approached me and wants me to start basketball.
Later on my grandmother convinced my mother and they enrolled me. That evening I joined the training.
That weekend, on a Saturday we had a match. I was playing in the starting five. It happened all of a sudden.
I always recall the excitement I felt on that first training;
I felt the love of basketball in my heart. I said to myself “I can do this!”