#its like we didnt dodge a bullet but we did at least avoid getting vital organs hurt

[briarpatch-kids]

this ask got away from me so 1, i just want to clarify i'm agreeing with you, and 2 i understand if you don't post it lol.

i have had someone try to Gotcha me by asking how i'm alive by now if i'm really too disabled to work. i told them i had support growing up or i'd be dead lol like i don't know what they expected. survivorship bias is wild.

Like. If you are relatively low support needs, yes you can absolutely still suffer from a lack of money/insurance or have parents who don't care or are working so much they don't have time to act etc, and you end up undiagnosed and untreated into your adulthood. That sucks! It does!

But if you're a HIGH support needs person in that same position, either you catch the notice of a public school teacher or something and get access to free or cheap resources, or you are much less likely to MAKE IT to adulthood.

so we end up with this weird crossroads of relatively low support needs people (i'm not up on terminology i apologize) getting diagnosed as adults, and some of them turning around and resenting higher support needs people with early diagnoses, and assuming they've led some kind of charmed life.

but like. no i don't actually think my childhood friend with a more visible disability than me is "privileged" over ME because she had a school-funded aide for a few years and was subjected to our shitty town's probably traumatizing special ed system. i didn't get diagnosed because my parents were oblivious and i was able to mask, and that ability is a privilege i'm VERY aware of because early diagnosis of my ND issues against my will specifically would have HURT me.

it frustrates me because i experience kind of the other version of this with my physical disabilities. i was visibly not okay most of the time, but i lived in the middle of nowhere with no infrastructure for complex medical issues. most of my shit didn't get diagnosed or treated until my twenties and some of it STILL isn't, and that has done lasting harm to my body and brain. and i'm still one of the fucking lucky ones. if i had my same support needs but grew up as poor as i am now, i'd be dead.

so like, am i MORE or LESS privileged than a poorer person living in a bigger city who got diagnosed young but didn't need the supports and just got the stigma? or a rich person who can buy their own adaptive tech but has such a rare and severe case that they still have no diagnosis and are constantly playing a guessing game about what will help and what will make things worse? it's meaningless. privilege is an element of our lives not a label to slap on and call it a day

I feel you, I'm a similar situation to you where as a kid I needed support and didn't get it but could kinda get by, and yeah it sucked but like... I'm still here and while that's not quite a privilege it's certainly something that only happened because I'm lucky and I wouldn't trade "needs support or would die" for having support as a kid.

It's a privilege in the sense of like "don't be a dick to people who wouldn't have survived without supports because they got help" but people who struggled and could make it aren't "privileged" because a lot of times we barely made it and were at a disadvantage compared to our abled peers.