Has anyone else experienced this kind of rejection because of cerebral palsy?

I’m a 21-year-old man with mild/moderate cerebral palsy. It affects my gait, but I’m independent, I walk on my own, play guitar, teach guitar, and generally live a pretty normal life. I don’t have major issues with self-esteem or with seeing myself as attractive or desirable. I’ve had romantic experiences before, including kissing and physical affection.
About a year ago, when I was 20, I met a girl online. We talked for more than a month and became quite emotionally close. I told her that I had CP before we ever met in person. She didn’t seem to have a problem with it, so eventually we went on a date.
Things felt strange almost immediately. She seemed very worried about being seen with me by her friends or acquaintances. At one point she said something that really stuck with me: “I thought you were a normal guy.”
Later, she told me that she had mentioned my CP to her mother, even though we had agreed not to tell our families personal things about each other. Her mother apparently reacted with things like: “Why do you need him? He’s disabled.” and “I don’t understand how someone could kiss someone like that, let alone have sex with him.”
After that, the girl became increasingly distant and stopped seeing me as a potential boyfriend. What hurt the most wasn’t simply that she didn’t want a relationship. People are allowed to be attracted to whoever they are attracted to.
What hurt was the combination of hiding her real feelings, letting me believe everything was fine, breaking the agreement about telling her family, and then making comments that made me feel as though my disability had suddenly changed me from a “normal guy” into someone fundamentally different.
Interestingly, she later told me about another friend of hers who has CP. He had apparently confessed his feelings to her, and she had rejected him. She seemed to use this story to reassure me that she was “not prejudiced,” even though she had just told me something extremely hurtful.
Eventually I ended things myself. She wanted to remain friends, but I had feelings for her and had already made it clear that friendship wasn’t what I wanted. When I asked her to honestly tell me why she no longer saw me as a potential partner, she wouldn’t say it directly. I eventually told her that I believed CP was the reason. She was genuinely surprised that I had figured it out.
There were also arguments afterward where I felt she was trying to make me question whether I had any right to be hurt by what happened.
I don’t want to portray every person who rejects someone with CP as ableist. Attraction is complicated, and everyone has the right to decide who they want to date.
What I’m struggling with is something more specific:
How do you deal with the experience of someone initially getting to know you as a person, then changing their entire perception of you after seeing your disability more closely?
I’m still attracted to people. I still want sex, intimacy and relationships. I’m not sitting here thinking that nobody could ever want me.
But this experience affected me much more than I expected. I’ve tried dating again since then, but I haven’t been able to really get back into it. Part of me is afraid of becoming emotionally invested in someone, only to have the same thing happen again once they see how my CP actually affects me.
I’d really like to hear from other men with CP, especially those with relatively mild/moderate CP, and from partners of people with CP.
Have you experienced something similar? Did dating get easier with time? And how did you learn to distinguish between someone who genuinely accepts you and someone who only thinks they do until your disability becomes more real to them?