Many able-bodied people also feel uncomfortable in the presence of disabled people. We are the undead. Alive, but functioning without some power the able-bodied consider essential to life. We seem to astonish them merely by surviving. I giggle at the absurdity of this misplaced praise, knowing full well that able-bodied people need to distance themselves from our experience.
Nature makes certain arbitrary decisions.
Some people can walk, others cannot. Able-bodied people do not want to be reminded, after all, that they are one accident, one virus, one gene away from being disabled themselves. Society, too, of course, makes arbitrary decisions about who is and who is not disabled. Thus, I am disabled because I need help to get through the day. But Bob Dole, who has a paralyzed right arm and also needs assistants to get through the day, can pass as able-bodied.