#internalized abelism

[forthewritereasons]

July 1 for @whumperless-whump-event

Emergency First Aid: Self stitches/alcohol as sanitizer/it's just a scratch 

Fandom: Daredevil

CW: I am terrible at tagging I have no idea what people tag, let me know if there's something you think should be tagged. Disability. Abelism. Internalized ableism. First aid.

--

A clatter in the bathroom is the first indication that something is amiss. 

Foggy's ears pick up in a way they do when he's trying to be helpful. After living together as long as they have, he knows Matt is much more capable than many might give him credit for. And more fiercely independent than a clause that can stand by itself in a sentence. That's a grammar joke. 

When they were first assigned as roommates, he stumbled into a few casually abelist situations in which he tried to be Matt's knight in shining armor, and only discovered how much Matt had no need of rescuing. But still, when your roommate is blind there are certain things you should watch out for. For example: you should make sure you shut the kitchen cupboards and drawers after opening them. You should always put the sharp knives in the same spot, and never sticking up in the dishwasher. You should refrain from accidentally moving the coffee table into the middle of the walking path in order to create more room for pushups in front of the tv. And you should keep your ears open for things like clattering in the bathroom, and the subsequent string of barely audible curses that seem to be happening now. 

"Matt?" He ventures. 

A *whack*, *thud*, and then *moan*. 

Foggy gets to his feet and paces to the bathroom door cautiously, wincing. He doesn't want Matt to think that he's interfering, but... "Buddy do you need help? I'm just out here twiddling my thumbs. Happy to be of assistance."

A heavy sigh. 

"Okay," Matt calls. "Come in."

Foggy braces himself. The fact independent clause Matthew Murdock is accepting an offer of help is already putting him on edge. 

He pushes the door open and tries to parse the sight in front of him without causing a scene. "Uh...Matt...what the hell?" 

Shirtless, Matt is bleeding from a sizeable gash on the back of his shoulder, and in his hand he wield's a needle and thread. He's twisted into something akin to a pretzel in his attempt to perform his own stitches, and appears to be failing miserably, the gash looking irritated and awful, the thread tugging awkwardly at both sides of torn flesh. 

"I...can't reach," Matt admits sheepishly, gaze drifting to the left even though the pleading look in his eyes is obviously meant for Foggy.

"For God's sake- Matt!" Foggy gestures at his impossible roommate with his boxer-father toxic masculine trauma and his hyper-independent internalized ableism. "What the hell are you doing? What happened? Why didn't you go to the nurse?" 

"It's just a scratch," Matt sighs, a sense of defeat in his tone. "Could you...help?" 

"And what do you want *me* to do?" Foggy demands. "I'm not a doctor!" 

"Look, a twelve year old could do this," Matt insists, doing that infuriating thing where he wets his lips and then talks down to you like you are, in fact, twelve. 

"Speak for yourself," Foggy huffs. "When I was twelve *I* was playing Operation. And losing!" 

"Come'on, Fog! It doesn't have to be pretty. Just has to keep my bleeding on the inside," Matt quips, lips tugging sideways in the charming way that Matt's lips tug right before Foggy agrees to do whatever he's asking. 

Foggy rolls his eyes. He's already committed. "Sit down," he demands. "You're getting blood everywhere and you look like you're going to fall over." 

Matt does as he's told, reaching for the bathroom vanity and following it to the corner before he lowers himself down to sit on the closed toilet. He straddles it, baring his shoulder and the jagged wound to Foggy. 

Reluctantly, Foggy washes his hands and takes the needle. "So what *did* happen this time?"

Matt shrugs, which makes the wound a moving target. "I got caught by a branch while Elektra and I..."

"Elektra did this to you?" He dabs hydrogen peroxide on a cotton ball over the cut.

"No," Matt cuts in. "No, we were...on a bicycle. In central park. And we...went off trail." 

"For the love of god, please tell me you weren't driving the bike." 

Matt chuckles. "No, I was not."

"And you came all the way home bleeding like this?" Foggy poises the needle on one side of the gash, chewing his lip worriedly. Finally he gets brave enough to stab it through one side and push to the other. Matt barely flinches. 

"It didn't seem so bad, but when I took my shirt off I think I made it worse."

Foggy's eyes flick to the discarded shirt on the floor. There's a good amount of blood on it. Some dark and dried. Maybe the wound scabbed over and reopened when Matt reached up for his shirt? 

"Looks like it hurts."

Matt shrugs again, which causes Foggy to stab him with a sharp poke. That time he does flinch and Foggy makes a small sound of distress. "Stop moving." 

"Right. It didn't hurt when it happened, I didn't notice till later. Hurts a fair bit now."

"Matty..." Foggy wets his lips. "You seem to get hurt a lot...when you're with Elektra." It's very clear to Foggy, since Matt and she have been dating, that if Elektra were Matt's roommate there would be no closing the cupboards and drawers, and the sharp knives would always be pointing up in the dishwasher. Blind or not. 

"We just have a lot of fun," Matt insists. "She doesn't treat me like... You know." 

Foggy takes a breath. Does he treat Matt differently? All those small accommodations he makes in his life to keep Matt safe and comfortable, does Matt notice the coffee table hasn't moved since he last hit it with his shin and think, Foggy only sees me as *disabled*? But he *is* blind. Treating him like he doesn't have a disability doesn't make his disability go away. A conflicted ball of thought is forming in Foggy's gut, but he's not sure how to verbalize it. Knowing him, at some point it will force it's way out wether he wants it to or not. 

"Just...try to be safe," he manages. God, he sounds like someone's mother. 

But "I will," Matt says. 

The stitches or ugly. Uneven. They're the first ones Foggy's ever done, and hopefully, the last he'll ever do. He sighs. 

"Good thing you're blind," he grumbles. 

Matt freezes for a moment, eyebrows lifted, and Foggy worries he's stepped in it. 

"I mean-"

But Matt starts laughing and then wincing and then apologizing all at once. 

"Good thing," he agrees. 

[maidofmetal]

I hate being disabled so goddamn much. I feel like a child but I also don't even feel lIke a fucking person. I hate this shit n I'm so fuckkng miserable wtf

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

Ableist things autistic people may internalise about ourselves…

Neurodivergent_lou

[jsbashirmd]

He takes one more careful sip and then puts it back in Morse's hand so he can curl into him again. "Even though I'm not good sometimes?" he asks timidly, referring to his meltdowns, which occur less with Morse, but certainly haven't gone away entirely. It's just like... all the bad things, build up and up and up inside of him until he can't take anymore, and then he can't be good anymore, no matter how much he tries.

He shrugs. Julian misses them sometimes--the way his father held him tight like nothing would ever be able to hurt him, the way his mother smiled at him--but... there's a lot more things, he thinks, that he doesn't miss at all. "If I don’t go back to them, will you adopt me?" He's asking about what Morse's plans are--not specifically requesting, but he thinks if he were adopted, if Morse was his new dad, maybe he'd be okay with his parents being just a series of memories. He reaches for the juice and carefully takes a single sip and swishes it around in his mouth before swallowing.

[toonbly]

this is the most autistic coded thing i have ever read in a book and i might be getting a bit emotional about it

[carcasscounty]

In honor of ace awareness day

Me and the characters I've projected my lack of bitches onto (/j)

Don't take this seriously, it's mostly just headcanons

Think whatever the hell you want about these characters

[tothesolarium]

Being the sexiest mech pilot turned bodyguard is tiresome work!

[lazy-toad]

No you don't get it, ADHD is totally real, yeah for everyone else it's real. Me? No I just have dumb, annoying, lazy bitch looking for excuses disease, yeah. It's sad really 😔

[bugwolfsstuff]

The irony of me doing an English assignment on the importance of memories rn and all im thinking about is how much i'd love to forget some memories

[alirhi]

Abelism can be so fucking sneaky. I don't mean when it's weaponized against disabled people by abled people, though that can often be insidious af too. I mean the shit we internalize and don't even know it.

My little sister has been talking non stop about needing a service dog. Repetition bothers my brain and I thought that was all it was when I would get annoyed with her for bringing it up AGAIN. Then just now, sitting with her new pup we intend to get trained as a service dog, I sat with my annoyance for a minute and tried to puzzle it out. You know what I got that pissed me off royally?

"If you can advocate for yourself, you must not be THAT disabled." How fucked up and awful is that? It took a few different ways of phrasing before I got to that root but still. Holy shit.

When we can, disabled people HAVE to advocate for ourselves. Society makes it clear over and over again that no one else will, or at least the few that will tend to be hard to find and get in touch with for any multitude of reasons. I know that very well, being in the middle of that battle myself. I can't believe how long I let that shit poison my brain.

[biceratops7]

I wanna talk about Micheal for a second

He’s my favorite character hands down, I relate to him on so many oddly specific levels. I’m neurodivergent so it’s hard for me to keep relationships or be social in general, so a lot of times I feel like I’m not really human but I badly want to be. I have low empathy, so the idea of Micheal being a literal demon that becomes this funny little guy who just loves so many things and loves his friends while still fundamentally remaining a demon (until the end but Micheal was Micheal long before that) is so comforting to me.

Also I know Eleanor is probably the more popular choice for “used to be pretty shit and is hyper aware of it” representation but idk man, Micheal just touches a nerve. It’s probably the whole struggling to feel like a person thing, but I stumbled across that one scene in season 4 where Micheal doesn’t wanna take off his human suit and let the people he cares about see that his soul is a giant terrifying pile of burning goo, and damn I felt that. Literally almost cried but to be fair I was tired.

[maidofmetal]

one day I'm going to have to admit to myself that I have high support needs but today is not that day ://

[another-whump-sideblog]

Masterlist

"Can you explain this gap in your resume?"

"I was abducted and tortured for years."

The interviewer stares at her. Waiting for her to reveal it was a bad joke. But it's not. She stares back.

"...Okay. Uh, I think that's all I need, thank you."

Ema is not going to get that job. She's not going to get any of the jobs she's applied for since she escaped.

"You don't have to tell them what happened." Tom said. "You can lie. They won't know."

But Ema doesn’t want a job where she has to hide what happened. She also doesn’t want a job where everyone knows what happened to her. She doesn’t want to talk about it or think about it and she doesn’t want other people to talk about it or think about it, but she doesn’t want to hide it.

She doesn’t really want a job at all, right now. She always wanted to be a music teacher at some middle or high school, but her music hasn’t been very good lately. It’s been better, since she embraced that her music doesn’t have to sound beautiful, but it’s not near a quality where she would feel comfortable teaching others.

And she’d have to go back to school, anyway. She doesn’t have the money for that. She had scholarships, but they definitely don’t apply anymore. She’d have to get new music-based scholarships, and she can’t play music the way she used to, so she can’t go back to school.

Her life goal, the thing she’d been working towards for so long, is now impossible. Every job interview is a reminder that this is not what she wanted to be doing.

“What would you say is your greatest weakness?”

“I’m really bad at handling conflict and stress. I shut down.”

“Ah. Well, it was nice meeting you. We’ll be in contact.”

Ema will be lucky if she gets a rejection letter. Tom says that if she can’t work after what happened, that’s okay, and he can help her through the long and difficult process of getting disability payments. But that would require a diagnosis, and a diagnosis would require seeing more doctors or therapists and talking about what happened and, if she tries to get a PTSD diagnosis, how often she relives it, and then people will ask if she really can’t work or is just being lazy and all of that sounds worse than any job interview or possible job. So she tells him it’s fine.

“Can you lift 50 pounds or more?”

“No. I can’t reliably walk in a straight line either, and my grip strength is very weak.”

Ema has been feeling better since she started focusing on getting more of the vitamins she’s deficient in, but those things haven’t changed. They become more and more noticeable the more she tries to go back to living a normal life.

When not sending out her resume and attending job interviews, Ema has been spending a lot of time at a nearby music store, playing horrible music, trying to pretend she can still be the person she always wanted to be. That he didn’t ruin her entire life and body permanently and she’ll never be okay again-

The first time an employee came and tapped her on the shoulder, she was terrified they were going to kick her out for spending hours there without buying anything. But they just said hi, complimented her playing, and went back to work.

Over the course of weeks, the two spoke a few times. Nothing too deep, just small talk. Ema has learned that the employee’s name is Tina, that she’s 17, that she’s saving up for a car, and that she’s always chewing spearmint gum. And despite Ema never telling her, Tina has picked up on the fact that Ema doesn’t have a job, but needs one.

“Ema! Guess what?”

Ema doesn’t like being interrupted while playing, but she forces a friendly-ish smile. “What?”

“My co-worker is quitting! You could work here!”

“Oh, I’m not… I have a big gap in my resume, and I don’t have a degree, and I have neurological damage, so I have bad balance and grip strength. And I’m horrible at dealing with conflict. I doubt anyone will ever hire me.”

Tina pouts. “You don’t need balance or grip strength, it’s just the desk admin job. And I know what questions they ask in the interviews, and how to handle rude customers, so I can help you practice.”

Ema… wouldn’t hate working at a music store. But she shouldn’t get her hopes up. “I don’t have any experience with that.”

“It’s an entry level job, you don’t need experience. You should probably tell them you know how to use Excel, though.”

“I don’t.”

“Find a video online, it’s not that hard. And I can help, I have to use Excel for some of my projects at school.”

Tom’s been telling her that there’s nothing wrong with a little white lie in an interview or an application. And she knows the employees here already, if only a little, and she likes this place a lot. “Maybe. I guess it’s worth a shot.”

Tina grins. “That’s the spirit! I need to go do my job now, but I’ll give you some tips for the interview later, okay?”

Ema nods. Tom will be happy to hear that she’s willing to actually try, this time around.

A future is opening up in front of her. Not the big, all encompassing one from when she was a kid, where she became a teacher and won awards and learned to play every instrument in the world. A smaller one, where she goes to work at this desk admin job, then comes home and calls Tom to hang out if she feels up to it.

Everything she ever imagined her life would be is impossible now. Now, she starts to imagine something else.

[fishin-in-a-graveyard]

They literally just wanted to torture us Wtf

 This is my own personal hell!!  No wonder we all have so much Internalized ableism!!

[despairlost]

Sending these b-day related things to myself since none of my irl friends would know to do it for me 😔 not that they are bad for it, just that my things are niche enough that they wouldn't know

(bonus: meme I made 5 min ago)

[ace-dodo]

Help that explains sm 💀💀