Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".
Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"
And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".
Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.
At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.
So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!
Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!
Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!
Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.
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Fun little silly thought I had about the Lair Games and specifically Leo deliberately losing is all the reasons he could have for doing so.
My favorite headcanon for his main motivation is that Splinter wasn’t proud of him anymore.
I imagine that, in the beginning, winning the Lair Games was Leo’s opportunity to shine. He wasn’t artistic or the baby of the family like Mikey, wasn’t a tech genius who created amazing inventions like Donnie, wasn’t the eldest who was insanely strong and dependable like Raph. So he had to shine somewhere else- anywhere else- and what better way to get attention than to be a winner? A champion?
And then he won too much. And it wasn’t special anymore. He got too big headed, too cocky, he knew this was his element and he ran with it.
Splinter’s words of congratulations slowly petered out. Suddenly, there was no real reason to win.
Winning feels empty when the only one cheering you on is yourself.
So- Leo schemed. And he’s a great schemer, fooling his whole family (and Donnie did deserve a win- people were way happier when he won.)
He even gave up his prized possession! His room!
Though he knows his brothers probably think it’s a bad prize. A terrible one, even.
Leo doesn’t sleep much as is, though. So Dad’s snores were more comforting than anything. It was reassuring to hear him so clearly alive and close by.
Even if the distance between them was larger than Leo’d like.
He’d just have to find something else, something more to show his dad that Leo was someone to trust, to be proud of, to love.
He gets his chance soon after, when he needs to pull off a plan against Big Mama at his dad’s side. Leo can only hope this victory is one that has a lasting effect when his father looks at him with pride once more.
Victory, for Leo, is a pretty loaded term.
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masochist gojo. gojo who's in love with pain, so much that it feels like pleasure, he can barely distinguish between the two anymore.
gojo who's so starved for touch. who's had an infinite space between himself and the whole world for so long, for so many years, every day in and day out.
gojo who's survived off glancing presses when a barista hands him a coffee, the rare hug from his students (who are mostly orphans) that he can't bring himself to decline.
gojo who craves more but can't bring himself to accept it except in fleeting moments with strangers or students.
his hands that long to be held. he wants it so bad that he teases a cursed spirit, laces his fingers with its own, right before he utterly crushes the being in battle, untouchable all over again.
gojo whose skin is hungry for someone else's. he hasn't felt the warmth of a hand in his own in so long. not since - since his youth.
gojo who sometimes wishes he could get hit. who sees the impact of curse techniques on his infinity and feels a wild, strange desire for them to go straight through and strike him.
he imagines it, vividly, being impaled by a long spear (inverted spear) that goes straight through him. how it would lance his flesh so cleanly.
being struck so hard, across the face, in the stomach, enough to knock the wind out of him.
enough to feel it with his whole body.
gojo who wants to be touched so bad he doesn't even care if it hurts anymore. infinity couldn't protect him from geto's betrayal.
gojo who keeps infinity up not because he doesn't want to get hit, but because he's terrified of what he might do when it happens.
gojo who got hard whenever geto sparred with him. he still doesn't know if it was because of geto, or because he had no infinity back then, no way to block the strikes.
he dreams of his youth. bruises littering his pale, pretty form like kisses, proof that he was human, there, that there was someone who could reach him.
dark purple things that turned pretty colors as they healed. he remembers pressing into them, relishing the hurt, feeling like he was getting hit (touched, reached, connected) all over again.
nothing ever touches him again. not like that. not like anything.
he never feels it. he never feels anything.
satoru gojo who wants, so very very badly, to feel something.
pain is a choice for him, always a choice. he alone has the privilege of deciding whether or not anything can touch him.
he could try to let more strangers touch him. one night stands, discreet arrangements. he had a pretty face and a body to match. there was no shortage of willing partners.
he lets them touch him, lets them hurt him. lets them drool over his body and use it at their leisure. they tell him he's beautiful, and he believes them.
white hair, blue eyes, sprawled out with a lean, unmarred body full of bare flesh for them to bite and scratch and bruise. he finds people who will do it, do it hard, fuck him up until he's lost entirely in the feeling of being touched, having someone against him, with him, above him.
it makes him feel like a piece of meat. it makes him feel good.
or he thinks it does, anyways.
sometimes, when he's gone particularly long without sleep, when his partner has gone particularly hard, he gets a real rush.
heart racing out of his chest. a cold sweat that overwhelms him. breaths coming in labored gasps. he can heal himself, he's physically fine, so this must all be in his head.
he acknowledges that information, distantly, like it's not happening to him. it doesn't help.
it feels like part of his body has been ripped away from him, something vital and important, and it's about to get up and run away.
always, always, it happens when his partner is no longer touching him. when he lays alone in the sheets, by his own volition, because of course these partners are not meant to be attachments.
love is not a privilege, though, not for the strongest sorcerer. it's a curse.
it's the only curse which infinity cannot protect him from.
so gojo stays untouchable. distant.
but the hunger doesn't go away. never.
he likes to imagine that suguru swallowed this one last curse before he died. something sweet and bitter, like losses at the arcade, sunny days at the beach, walking together with shoko, nanami, haibara.
but even suguru couldn't have absorbed this curse. it's in his bones, deep, longing and wanting even after he's dead and gone.
gojo is hungry. he is so, so hungry. and he has nothing to eat that will not leave him just as empty as before.
touch-starved. love-starved. pain-craving.
if someone could hurt him then it wouldn't matter that he was terrified of attachment. they could latch onto him, into his heart, under his skin. bury themselves in his chest like they belonged.
they could kill a hundred and twelve people and it wouldn't matter, because he wouldn't be able to kill them.
gojo is hungry, so hungry.
please feed him.
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