#why must i be physically disabled. this sucks

[orcelito]

Omfg. So I've long had a sensitivity to sugar. Can't eat too much of it w/o feeling nauseous. Etc etc. Just kinda the way of my life.

I was talking with family over the weekend tho and it came up and they were like. "Maybe you should get checked for pre-diabetes" 😅😅

& see the thing is. I have. So many family members who are/were diabetic. On both sides of the family. I really do have a genetic predisposition for it, maybe. Enough to make it worth getting checked out haha

[cripplecharacters]

Does Your Scarred Character Have to Hate Themself?

[large text: Does Your Scarred Character Have to Hate Themself?]

(TLDR: no. literally no.)

A frequent topic that shows up around facial differences is the self-hatred, self-disgust, self-insert-negative-emotion that we must surely experience. I want to ask* writers without FDs - why? Why do you feel about us in such a way that that's the most common way of depicting us?

*- rhetorical question. I promise I know the answers, but I'm not sure if writers do.

It's frankly worrying to me. Is it really that common to assume that disabled people have this internal, never-ending hatred for themselves? The overwhelming majority of us don't. We hate inaccessibility, when people stare, or some symptoms when they get in the way, or how expensive being disabled is, but I find the concept of us being so completely disturbed by our own disabilities extremely strange. It’s “tragedy porn” intersecting “most basic ableism”.

“But trauma!”

[large text: “But trauma!”]

Trauma of what! People with facial differences don't have some sort of default trauma that we come with like it’s a factory setting. We are a group of people with tens of thousands of stories and experiences!

“Trauma of experiencing ableism/disfiguremisia” - that's better, at least this means something. If you're writing a story about this, please get a sensitivity reader with a facial difference. You can assume how we feel all you want, but in my experience these assumptions are often bizarre and unrealistic. Or just end up writing the same “disability so sad” sob story that everyone has seen a billion times. If you want to write about disfiguremisia, you need to understand the nuance and have more than just the basic level knowledge (which 99% of people don’t have either). If you can’t do that, don’t write about it. Simple as that.

“Trauma of the accident” - thankfully, the accident is an event and a facial difference is a disability. If you want to connect these two like they're one and the same, you're almost surely going to demonize disability. People with traumatic spinal cord injuries, acquired amputees, people with TBI, people with acquired facial differences - we participate in our communities, we have hobbies, we date, we play with our dogs. Disability isn't a death sentence. Media who make it feel like it is certainly don't help people who do suddenly become disabled, don't you think?

Here's a post by @blindbeta about blind characters becoming blind through trauma that’s better made than anything I could hope to write here. I heavily recommend giving it a read.

And, I can't stress this enough - most of us didn't have “the accident”, most of us are born like this! "Traumatic scars" isn't the only facial difference that exists, far from it, it's only one of thousands. It's 99% of our representation and "representation". If you want to make a character with FD - please consider that we aren't a monolith. Just like not all physical disabilities are "wheelchair user with paralysis", not all facial differences are "traumatic scar with somehow no nerve damage".

The overrepresentation of it is incredibly telling, and sometimes - or very frequently - feels like the writer doesn’t actually even want to deal with us. They want to use our disability as a way to cheap drama, moral metaphors, tragic backstories. Not to represent us as living people who are much more similar to you than you apparently think.

Now, I do have enough awareness to know that that's a big part of the appeal. “Horrific Thing #2456 happens” and boom, instant drama! Of course, it's a reasonable response that they would hide their disability for years, avoid talking about it in any way, and magically change their personality to be mean and reclusive, or at least be constantly soooo sad about how much it sucks to be disabled, right?

Do I really need to say that having your character becoming disabled be the worst thing ever is ableism 101? We have been talking about this for so long at this point. Writing about the process of adapting to a specific disability is better left to people who have actual experience in it.

To give an example that will hopefully resonate more with Tumblr users, I will use the fact that I'm also gay. It's not perfect by any means but probably much more familiar territory.

Imagine, let's say, a character. He's gay. The story he's in is supposedly progressive, certainly not trying to be homophobic. The character has experienced an incident, maybe an act of aggression or a hate crime, that happened because he’s gay, which was traumatic. Happens IRL, sure. So of course the character starts hating being gay. He talks about how gross and disgusting it is, he never lets anyone know that he could be “one of them”, certainly not take a stance against homophobia. You can't mention him without mentioning the accident, they're seemingly fused together. No gay love, joy, even basic happiness, he would actually choose to be straight in a heartbeat if given the option to and complains that he can't. This is shown as a neutral, obvious thing that a gay man would do, no one comments on it. He stays like this the whole time, unless there’s a plot twist in the last 10 pages where the world is now magically perfect ("we fixed discrimination, yay!"). This is the only LGBT character in the story.

Keep in mind that there are people similar to this in real life, living with extreme internalized homophobia.

Is this, in your opinion, realistic and thoughtful representation? How does it feel when written by a cishet writer, versus a gay writer who is recalling his experiences? Do you think that it's reasonable for the majority of media representation to be like this, or very close to it? How would it affect younger gay people who might already be uncomfortable with being queer? Are gay men the target audience, or are they not even considered as a group of people who read books? Is this helping or damaging the general public's idea of how it is to be gay? Why or why not?

The Masterpiece

[large text: The Masterpiece]

From 13 to 19 of May, we are celebrating Face Equality week (what a coincidence!). It’s important to me in general - and I wish it was more important to abled people, but I digress - especially its theme for this year.

“My Face is a Masterpiece”

Great statement, it represents the community well, I do enjoy how bold it is. Very cool stuff, I love the work our advocates are doing!

But why do I bring this up?

Well, to very non-subtly show that we aren’t a self-hating group of people. We are a community, a community saying “our faces are beautiful, look!”, we are saying “treat us equally, and do it now!”. Our activism isn’t about self-disgust. It’s about fighting your-disgust. 

Why can’t writers keep up? Why are you still stuck decades behind?

Is this the only reason I bring it up?

The Call to Celebration

[large text: The Call to Celebration]

FEI, the org behind organizing it, asks a very simple question (emphasis mine):

“Why do we so often see stories about facial difference as a ‘tragedy’, when they should be about triumph?” “Calling all artists, allies, creatives, galleries.  You can rewrite the story to bring about #FaceEquality and celebrate the unique artistry found in every face. Your participation this #FaceEqualityWeek will help to tell the real story, that there is a masterpiece in every face.”

Here. We are calling for you to stop. Directly from the biggest international advocacy alliance group that's out there. If you create, this is for you.

The last argument to not have your character with a facial difference hate themselves? Because we don’t want this. We are tired and frustrated. For me personally, I’m also offended by this kind of assumption. We aren’t tragedies or cheap entertainment for abled people to pity or be horrified by. We are people, and if you can’t internalize that, you have no reason to write about us.

For once, celebrate us. Happy Face Equality Week!

mod Sasza

[iridessence]

I would like to take a moment to acknowledge myself and say that I am elated and proud to have manifested some of my major goals since 2018-2019. Basically before then, 2014-16 I struggled with depression and suicidal ideation quite frequently due to not having steady income, as jobs in retail seemed the only available and “safe” options, but long shifts standing at a registers or posts were damagingly hard on my body. In 2017 I got a desk job that set me on the path of financial stability and reduced physical load, which did absolute wonders for my mental health but it was an absolute blight to my existence over time due to terrible management and the usual corporate garbage. I knew that staying there was fine for a time but not sustainable in the long run, so change must come eventually.

also around then, I continued to explore self portraiture and personal style but I really wanted to perform/create Burlesque acts and book them, and invest in and actually have choreography/technique and beautiful costume pieces that looked like the visions refining themselves in my head through research. I was also perpetually struggling in the dating sphere with the deficit of romantic fulfillment that I deeply wanted. and while they weren’t hostile, things were definitely weird with my family (dysfunctional, literal small town energy, upset that I didn’t want to be around them more in the suburbs but lots of interpersonal toxicity and lack of emotional growth).

I knew that in the coming years I wanted to…

quit my soul sucking job and set out to be a full-time or at least professional level burlesque performer, creating the qualitative and classic show girl acts I dream to see on stage

work on the floor at a boutique or mom-and-pop type shop that sells goods or services that are interesting to me, especially aesthetically, such as an antique shop or a jewelry boutique etc., but a place where I could sit intermittently as needed for my physical disability. Also, ideally it would be a position where I could express myself through style at my choosing and it would be received well, and also my hours would not be very early or very late.

find a loving and supporting partner who I could lavish equal amounts of love and support on to, live with and hopefully marry

Achieve/maintain financial stability enough that I have a reduced risk for homelessness and sometimes treat myself to things that I enjoy.

Figure out why the relationship with my family was such a struggle and do things within my power and desire to fix it.

In a world that isn’t a corporate machine devoid of empathy, none of that seems like a tall order to ask… but I live in America so… It took some time, but I’m starting to see the fruits and returns. Honestly sometimes things feel like a blur and I’m not exactly sure I could say there was a huge system to what I did overtime to make it work, but I know the work was there.

As of today, September 9, 2023:

I am a respected professional burlesque performer with costumes I figuratively gag over and acts that come closer and closer to hitting the aesthetic nail on the head for what I want to embody. (I quit that shitty desk job at the beginning of 2019 and haven’t looked back since. Sent a whole ass company wide message with a long and detailed “fuck you” too.😂🙈)

i’ve managed through burlesque, social media work, donations and savings, and —since the global pandemic—,odd jobs and grants/minimal loans, to continuously pay rent and ward off homelessness 

I live with the love of my life, to whom I am engaged and actively planning our wedding (we looked at a venue yesterday!)

I’ve helped my mom on the growth of her emotional intelligence and commitment to learning more about values under the race, gender, and sexuality umbrella, as well pushed her to examine the enabling and entitlement dynamics with her adult children that take advantage of her. While my relationship with my brother and sister is not great, my relationship with my mom has been steadily getting better since the pandemic. we had a breakthrough at the beginning of this year where she acknowledged and apologized for guilt tripping me for not being around the family more, when I was (she quoted) “actually protecting myself like she should have been.”

and litcherally within the past week I was offered the job at a local boutique I interviewed with a year ago and didn’t get, and I signed an offer letter to begin work within the month. 

To say I’m happy with the way things look right now is an understatement. The world still terrifies me, but I have no choice but to carve out a sliver of its beautiful experiences for myself, and I am doing just that. It may not be perfection, but it’s pretty damn good and I’m going to do everything in my power to keep it that way and make it even better. I am living my ancestors' wildest dreams!!

for anyone reading who might be struggling right now to make things work, I hope you hold on to hope that it can get better. A beautiful life is possible even on this hell scape, even for the marginalized.

[fuck-customers]

Hello everyone. I’d like to give y’all a quick recap of my time in retail this holiday season:

-two guests tried to fight one of our online order guys, and from what I heard they absolutely provoked him and started the beef by stealing things from the order he was picking for

-had two female guests try to fight ME because I had the audacity to ask them why they were opening boxes of makeup, and management pretty much did nothing about it bc they continued shopping and got to checkout like nothing happened. Then had a leader, who knows nothing about my dept, try to come over and say it was my fault for not saying the exact right thing to her

-had a leader complain to upper management that I “don’t follow direction” bc she tried to come over to my dept, completely change the way we do shit by having me and my coworker switch areas (despite me telling her that our fucking SCHEDULE literally confirms that she is wrong, which she even later admitted herself???)

-had a lady throw boxes of makeup sponges at me

-had to tell multiple groups of very obviously rich and entitled teens/kids that is in fact extremely shitty to get the electric scooters meant for disabled guests and instead use them to race, play bumper cars, or stack three people in the basket on the front of it

Also. A VERY SPECIAL FUCK YOU to some specific customers. An hour after I got screamed at and threatened by the two customers I mentioned above, I guy walking through my area then drops an entire like 24 pack of topo Chico onto the floor and there’s fuckifn glass and water everywhere. Since I had just been screamed at and my leaders did nothing to have my back, I was little bit in a bad mood by the time the broken glass happened. Fucking sue me right?? Wel two guests who SAW ME cleaning up the glass (didn’t even fucking interact with me, I remember) and I guess thought that I didn’t look happy enough while I was doing that and decided to fucking FILE A COMPLAINT ABOUT IT.

Literally what fhe FUCK is wrong with you that you see a worker clearly having a very hard day, in the middle of holiday season, and you then think to yourself, “you know what? That worker needs to be smiling while being plowed in the ass by capitalism. And the fact that they’re not deriving physical, spiritual and sexual pleasure from their shitty retail job offends me so much I think I’ll have to complain about them and make it even worse.”

I even remember who might’ve complained too. Bc the guy that dropped the damn bottles in the first place didn’t even stick around to see it resolved (naturally) and so I didn’t even interact with any customers while cleaning it. HOWEVER, there was a couple standing nearby that when it happened, they immediately ran to his side like “oh man that’s so terrible you must be having a bad day? Are you alright? Do you need help?” So I guess fuck the person who actually has to clean this all up, no instead we should fawn over the jackass who broke all this glass and couldn’t even pretend he cared about it. Because that makes perfect fucking sense. Also love the casual implication that retail workers must be smiling deliriously all the fucking time and that I am not allowed to show any emotions besides that bc I am subhuman and not deserving of any grace or empathy. So dear customers who complained… I’m literally BEGGING the universe to fuck you over and YOU personally because if you truly had nothing better to do than scrutinize the facial expressions of a retail worker you never even interacted with, you are truly a waste of oxygen and are detrimental to society. I hope your nastiness comes back to bite you in the ass. I hope someone kicks YOU while you’re down and I hope it fucking sucks, you worthless piece of shit.

Posted by admin Rodney.

[submalevolentgrace]

Hi! I hope you're doing well :) please don't stop talking about how prosthesis limbs suck and your experience with them! I'm in medical school right now, and I thought it was amazing to read because it highlights 1. how doctors need to listen to their patients 2. Wow doctors kind of suck and patients should be able to advocate for themselves, and if they can't do that, someone should! And 3. Patients shouldn't be pressured into doing things they don't want to do. For me personally, I kind of already had those ideas, but your posts really put it into perspective and just emphasized them and I'm really appreciative of that :) last thing (promise) I was wondering if you've seen/read Dororo! One of the main characters (Hyakkimaru) spends the majority (like 90%) without arms, instead having sword attachments that are covered with fake arms. I was wondering if you had seen it/him and had any thoughts. If not, it might be something to check out! Thank you again :D

so i showed this ask to my girlfriend, who knows me (and my trauma) very well, and she said: "I would recommend NOT googling that character, that's for sure. this is almost the exact worst kind of thing someone could mention you check out! I wont go into detail but it's also the exact example of taking a disabled person and "fixing" them back to normal that you were talking about."

so, you're already off to a bad start i'm afraid.

listen. if you have any scraps of empathy and compassion and belief in patients' autonomy left, hold onto them, guard them, and fortify them against the education you're going through. med school will try to crush any compassion and empathy you had out of you. residency will grind your humanity for your patients down to nothing, you will be encouraged to stop seeing them as people, and your colleagues will train you to believe that you are right and know what's best, and patients are wrong and lie and are a danger to themselves. you will be taught that patients advocating for themselves rather than blindly listening is an annoying interruption to you trying to save them, or maybe even proof that they are a risk to themselves and cannot be trusted. you will be exhausted and frustrated and angry, and you will be faced with a patient who rightly believes what's best for themselves is something you believe is harmful to them. will you have enough compassion, empathy, and belief in patients' autonomy left to respect them as a human being, as a person?

you have to understand where i am coming from. i have a serious condition that's been misdiagnosed twice, forced onto treatments i didn't want, and denied treatment that would help me because of my "attitude", and once a diagnosis is on the records no doctor will consider any other possibility, so i have suffered without care for years on end. i have been sexually assaulted by doctors in their treatment rooms, and then told that's impossible BECAUSE they are a doctor, and doctors are good.

i have had surgery performed on me against my consent. this is not uncommon for disabled people. it was not necessary to save my life. i advocated, i begged, and i was denied the right to consent. it was an unneeded major surgery that harmed me, physically and psychologically, that i will never recover from.

but why would they do this, you must be asking? i must be omitting detail that makes it make sense, you are probably thinking. already thinking like a doctor, shaped by those beliefs. they MUST have been trying to help me in some way with that surgery, right? i must be lying about it, right?

my great crime there is that i was comfortable being disabled. i was at peace with loss of limb, a limb that was already failing me, already useless. i was prepared to be physically, seriously disabled, and they could not comprehend that, could not accept that. in the eyes of a doctor, losing a limb makes someone broken; disability is the enemy, and it must be fought at all cost, the patient must be FIXED at all costs, even if they don't want it. and doctors will go to extreme lengths to make that happen, patient be damned. that's a doctor's idea of compassion: patients must be fixed, even if it harms them.

to me, and most disabled folks i've ever spoken to, doctors are basically like cops; a dangerous threatening force of harm, but that you have to perform correct behavior and respect around in order to stay safe. but where cops are legally blessed to kidnap and murder you, doctors are legally blessed to kidnap and torture you, to invade and change your body in the most intimate ways, and they will tell you, themselves, and each other that they do it for your own good.

so, have i bruised your ego? are you feeling attacked, defensive, accused of being in a cohort of monsters, certain that you could never be like that, that you're one of the good ones? you're already in med school, you're already someone with the qualities to self select for it and the privilege and abledness to make it in, you already have that baggage to try and counter if you want to empathise with your patients. how much pressure has there been from your family and peers to do it, how much praise have you gotten, how much has that fed your ego, your sense of being better than others? better able to help others? better qualified to know what's best for others? i hope that you do genuinely have compassion, and empathy, and belief in patients' autonomy in you, and it's not just hollow words you tell yourself are values.

i hope you have that compassion, and can act on that belief in autonomy. because it's not just about a prostheses one can take off and throw away. if you make it through the grinder and become a doctor, one day you will be faced with a patient that says "i would rather be permanently broken in a way that you find unacceptable, than put up with the treatment you want me to have", and you will believe, with your full heart and mind and vast knowledge of medicine, you will KNOW in yourself that they are wrong.

are you willing to accept that YOU are wrong, and they are actually right? are you willing to deem them worthy of autonomy? or will you prep them for surgery to fix them, as they are begging you not to?

[asexual-society]

I needed another ace's opinion on this or I was gonna go crazy. I feel so alone.

My best friend is allo and recently started to go to therapy. His therapist told him something to incinuate that my advice about romantic relationships was less valuable/productive because "our brains work differently" because I'm ace and he isn't.

He's upset that I'm upset about it when I believe this is just benevolent aphobia. I see it the same way as someone telling a straight person not to take advice from a gay person. Am I just making a big deal out of nothing? Why is my opinion less important/applicable because I don't have the same experience as someone else?

I personally don't think an aro or ace person's advice on relationships is less valuable just because our brains work differently or our experiences are different, I mean, for most other topics, asking someone impartial for advice is completely normal, even if you take that person's advice with a pinch of salt because they don't have firsthand knowledge of the situation. I've had my opinions and advice belittled countless times and I know how hurtful it can be, and there are times when someone's opinion on a subject is totally useless because they're not informed about it, but this isn't like asking your friend who can't drive for advice how to parallel park or your American friend about British politics,, culturally and socially we are fed a LOT about relationships all the time for our whole lives, even without firsthand experience, we absorb a lot of information, and that's not even accounting for the things we have actively sought out, or the experiences of aspec people who have been in relationships.

I understand that we might not fully understand how it feels to be allo and want relationships of whatever kind in the same way, but a lot of (not all, I'll grant you) ace and aro people know as much or more about aspects of sex and romance than your average allo purely on the basis of having had to learn about it ourselves, and I think we have incredibly valuable insights into relationships that are generally overlooked by people who take for granted that everyone feels the same way about sex and romance. Maybe my confidence is unearned, but I'm still here giving advice to strangers on the internet, and people keep asking for it, so someone must think my opinion is worthwhile, and if I can't give someone the advice or help a person needs, I'll just say that. The number of allo people who have terrible relationships and then give out terrible advice because of it is crazy, like. genuinely there's some actively dangerous advice being pedaled by allos, I think on average an ace or aro person acting in good faith can give advice of a similar quality to your average allo person's.

By the therapist's same logic you can't trust them with advice about how aspec people are, in fact you can't trust them to give advice about any mental or physical illness or disability they don't experience, which is obviously not how therapy works. Tbh, I'd argue that unless a therapist is aspec themselves or has been given decent training about aspec people, which generally speaking, they aren't (although there are some good ones), anything they have to say with regards to us is even less "valuable or productive" than what an aspec person thinks about relationships.

There will always be aspec people who give terrible advice, and trust me, I have heard some terminally online or just downright ignorant takes, but I've heard just as bad, if not worse from allo people, and acting like we're the problem sucks.

~ mod key

[amewinterswriting]

So, I've been playing the remaster of Baten Kaitos lately and for a JRPG of it's time (2003, originally) I'm actually quite amazed by how the narrative subtext frames disability. Major spoilers after the read more, and I will explain everything so you should understand even if you know nothing about the game.

In the world of Baten Kaitos, islands are kept aloft in the sky and the people live on them because of a disaster that poisoned the earth. Most of these people have wings on their back that they can make appear and disappear at will. They are referred to as 'Wings of the Heart' and their appearance is unique to each person, symbolizing their hopes and dreams and personalities. The people of the Empire do not have wings (? or perhaps choose not to use them, according to the prequel) but compensate with mechanical 'winglets'. It's also worth mentioning that the Empire is a major antagonistic force for about half the game, so even though there are friendly characters who come from the Empire, the association of no natural wings is predominantly 'evil'.

The protagonist only has one natural wing, and a prosthetic wing to compensate. It is shown that he has faced prejudice because of this - people treating him with suspicion and hatred because if his wings are deformed, it follows that his 'heart'/soul must be deformed as well.

In fact, this is a major motivation for him deceiving the rest of the party and the player themselves, aligning himself with the evil god we were trying to prevent from being resurrected the whole game. His 'payment' is a second, natural wing to match his existing one.

The plot then follows a secondary protagonist who eventually manages to confront him with a magical artifact that disrupts the evil god's power for long enough that he can choose a different path. And he does so, physically ripping off the wing he was 'gifted' and returning to the good guys and using his prosthetic (which the second protagonist had kept safe for him in the hope that he would one day rejoin them and he might need it).

While I have a lot of criticism for some elements of that plot (the one-winged protagonist should definitely have had more of a 'redemption' arc after deceiving the whole party and the player in a way that nearly destroys the entire world, but five minutes after he's rejoined the party it is almost as if it never happened), it is interesting that a game of this age does address the fantasy of 'what if I could just be magically fixed' and reject it. It actively frames the use of the prosthetic (something crafted for him with love and care from his family, later protected and cared for by the party in the hope that he'd come back to them) as something positive and better than a magical cure for him.

It's definitely not a perfect story (I would have loved to see some kind of connection between the party members - even at the end of the game, it does feel a lot like a group of strangers just happened to be going the same way and tagged along with each other), and I can't bring myself to decide whether the 'prosthetic' plotline is helped or hindered by the idea the the prosthetic is not a physical inconvenience in any way (never seems to need maintenance and works just as well as a natural wing, even adjusting as the protagonist grows) and only a social one (characters comment on it, some in negative ways and he admits he's faced that kind of prejudice his whole life). On the one hand, it's nice that he only actually faces any problems because of other people - it's a fantasy story, why shouldn't his inventor grandfather be able to make the perfect prosthetic for him? On the other hand, not having any physical ramifications (that the player is aware of) really does make his flip flop to the darkside and back for an hour seem a little cheap. Like, you've been bullied a bit, that sucks, it's still not worth screwing everyone else over, including all the people who have actively fought beside you to prevent the very thing you're doing?

But overall, the handling of his disability and the fact that the game doesn't just hand him a magical 'cure' as his happy ending? That feels pretty good to me.

[flamingpen18]

Possible Home

Dave came back last night and handed me an application. He said we are leaving the motel on Thursday. He found us a place with help from his friend. He pointed out that we can no longer stay at the motel.

So instead of being able to rejoice in finding a place to live, I am wallowing in concern. We have no money. I can't order internet or cable right now because I have nothing in the bank other than $1.43. Even if I had some funds, there is a waiting time for servicemen to show up and hook everything up. Dave never even thought about that. So, we will not have internet or tv. for quite a while.

Why does this concern me? I do all my business online. I have to. I am disabled and have extreme difficulty getting around. I pay my bills online. Having no internet will interfere with all of that. Plus, @helly-watermelonsmellinfellon has commissions from Ko-fi that she is working on and won't be able to do until we have internet.

No tv means we have nothing to do. We live in a rural area, the boon docks. We can't walk anywhere, and I am unable to walk for any length of time anyway.

The other massive issues is that we have no couches and no beds. Every one of our beds and the couches were chewed on and destroyed by rodents that had gotten in to our storage unit. We have nothing to sit on and nothing to sleep on.

It gets worse. Dave NEVER even considered that. He thought he was going to just move us into the house and have us wait until the weekend to get beds and something to sit on. He even though we can just show up to Rent-A-Center for all of it without having to pay a dime. Where does he come up with this crap?

I am permanently physically disabled. I can barely walk with a cane. Ideally, I should be using a motorized wheelchair, but that's a pain in the ass to get my doctor to sign off on. So, I am unable to get on the floor. The only way that would happen is if I fell. Trust me, no one wants that. The last time I fell, I ended up with a blood clot in my leg that made it's way to my lung. I nearly died.

The other issues is I cannot stand up from a low height. My knees are shot. I have nothing left. So it is imperative that I have at least a bed to sit/sleep on. The floor will not work for me.

We have no money. Nothing. Dave told me his friend is fronting the money for us to move because the motel room is sucking us dry. But not once did Dave ever take it into consideration about internet, tv, phone, food, cleaning supplies, not a damn thing.

My greatest wish is finding a place to live. But we need money to do that. We have needs that must be met when we move. Not one of those needs did Dave think of. *bashes head against wall*

Please help if you can. Please share.

[circlejourney]

When I was 24, I decided to get assessed for autism. At that point, I was in the midst of moving my life to a different country, and while it was not easy, and still isn't, it was also the first time I ever got to live "as a full adult."

Up till that point, my parents had made most of my life decisions on my behalf, including controlling my bank account until I became an adult, taking the prize money I won at competitions, deciding I wasn't allowed to apply to universities overseas for my bachelor's, and generally systematically convincing me I could not survive living on my own.

Anyway, for the first time in my life, I could make my own life decisions. And so I came home one summer, and told them about my wish to get assessed. And they told me something to the effect of:

When you were 13, your secondary school teacher asked us if you were autistic and thought you should get assessed. But we decided we didn't want you to have that label.

[cw self injury and physical abuse, also generally very personal outpouring here]

And you know...after hearing about my friends' horrible experiences with mental health diagnoses and suicide attempts "staining" their record for the rest of their lives...I kind of get it.

They were doing it for my safety. In Singapore, unlike in Australia, having mental illness on your record genuinely affects your chances at employment and access to other freedoms. Disability rights are awful there. And worse than the rights is the stigma.

My parents made the judgment call not to get me checked, because it was seemingly not affecting my functioning. I was studying at "top schools" all my life because my grades and extracurriculars qualified me to be there. I was doing well even in a school where exams were tuned and benchmarked so that only a certain fraction of the students scored an A (because 90% of the students would score an A otherwise). In my parents' eyes, there was not a problem big enough to warrant something so life-changing as a diagnosis.

Still, I don't think I needed a label to receive the stigma, but that's beside the point here. The point is that the diagnosis could have been dangerous in Singapore, and we were in a double bind, where they could not let me seek help, or I risked losing full personhood in the eyes of the State.

After moving to Australia, a lot of other things became clear. Beginning from the fact that my Master's degree course load in Australia was half that of my bachelor's in Singapore. Relatively speaking, I sailed by on my Master's, partly because the hours were so relaxed, and I had the time to live my life in the midst of it. And my bachelor's was easier, again, than high school.

I found out that learning someone was regularly beating their kid was grounds to call Child Protection Services. Haha, what? You mean that thing my parents did so much that I started to avoid coming home from school, is a crime in some countries?

Earlier this year, I heard from my sister that she's working 30-hour shifts on-site as a doctor. She doesn't get any sort of break for sleep in the middle of it, and she does this weekly. 70-hour work weeks, and this isn't even abnormal in Singapore - it's expected of doctors in their first years. And my parents went through that too, and have been telling my sister to suck it up.

What I think is that the Singapore government likes to keep us all in a bubble. It feeds us the lie that this is how all humans live, under the guise of knowing what's best for us. And you really don't know how different life could be - the constant pressure, and the lack of regard for our personhood, is like water to a fish.

And it gets replicated within the household - to align with the State, the Family then must re-enact its authoritarianism. I can't get diagnosed and seek help, I will stop being seen as human if I do. Why do you keep yelling at teachers and throwing things at your classmates? Why do you keep having meltdowns? You need to learn anger management. And I do my exams and I get my A's, and all is well, because see, the grades prove that you're more than functional.

Anyway I started self-harming when I was 10 years old. I thought about committing suicide all the time. As a child. I couldn't understand why the world felt like it was on the other side of a glass wall, through which no one could hear me. Why I never felt like a part of the picture. Why no one seemed to trust me to do anything right.

It makes infinitely more sense now, but I still feel like I'm on the other side of a glass wall, and sometimes I wonder if it's simply too late for me to develop a fundamental sense of security in myself. I have seen my therapist for 5 years and we've made a small amount of headway. But it probably takes more than 5 years to undo, uh, all that.

[house-of-slayterr]

Being autistic is weird as fuck, because you’ve never experienced NOT being autistic. Like autism is unfortunately measured by how not allistic we are. Like it’s directly proportional. It’s not autistic people decided that were different and that difference is wrong. But HOW THE FUCK ARE WE SUPPOSED TO KNOW WERE DIFFERENT?

I’ve never been anyone but myself. How am I supposed to know that I don’t feel things the same way as everyone else? How am I supposed to know that I talk weird? Like how should I know that I can’t read social cues, if I’m unable to read social cues? Hello? My inability to understand the task, makes me unable to understand that I’m unable to understand the task!

Like to get an official diagnosis you have to rely on the fact that other people looked at you as a kid and went “that’s weird, it’s not supposed to do that!” And then their “cure” is to just tell you “well stop doing that.” Like gee thanks bud, never thought of that. If I could just turn off my autism you think I wouldn’t have tried by now? You’re the reason my autism is even stigmatised in the first place!

My autism specifically comes with the complete inability to introspect. Like so much of my problems as a kid would have been solved if I just realised “oh, this is an autism thing” instead of being like “oh, well I just must suck at everything, and this is how everyone feels, so why am I the only one having a mental breakdown?”

But also phrases like “everyone’s on the spectrum” are so harmful, cause they just aren’t true!!!! When I was having anxiety attacks as a kid, my mom would always say “well everyone has anxiety.” Which made me think I was just weak, when in reality I have a mental illness that had treatment options and I could have gotten help the whole time, if people stoped minimising disorders.

“We’ll everyone’s a little depressed.” No- no they are not. There are people out there that have never experienced having a brain with mental illness. But my brains always been sick, and when you can only view the world from a sick brain, how would you ever know there were healthy brains out there?

Especially since things like mental illness and learning disabilities or physical disabilities are all hush hush. We aren’t supped to talk about them because it’s “inappropriate” somehow. And then they make you feel crazy when you do talk about it. Like parents who beg their kids to “just be normal” THIS IS MY NORMAL!!! I can’t be like you because I’m not you, and I don’t know how to pretend to be. And I shouldn’t have to!

You don’t suddenly become autistic when someone slaps the label on you. Which is why I always respect self diagnosis, because you know you better than anyone else ever could.

Another story to prove my point. Let’s talk about being LGBT on top of that. My entire life I always thought everyone was Bi. Like I assumed everyone just happened to end up in straight relationships, because how could people not think boys and girls are both pretty? I had no reference to know otherwise.

And after that, I assumed everyone was asexual. I didn’t have a term for it at the time, but I genuinely though everyone was joking about enjoying sex or being horny. Because I’d never experienced those things before, I couldn’t fathom what they were meant to feel like. And if I didn’t feel it as a “normal” human, everyone must just be playing an inside joke I don’t understand right?

But if I just had labels when I was young, I would have understood these things. People who ask “why would you want to diagnose your kid, they’re so young?” Or parents who withhold a diagnosis cause you think if you ignore it, your kid will be “normal” somehow. That’s not how it works. A diagnosis or label can make the world less scary, and often times it can bring you to people who can help you navigate the world. Instead of trying to force you to see it through their eyes.

Autism isn’t dirty. Mental illness isn’t dirty. Disabilities aren’t dirty. And being LGBTQ isn’t dirty!

Children of all ages should have access to knowledge of these things. Because to the people who are part of these groups, labels and information are vital. They’re a huge part of who we are and they aren’t going to go away just because you don’t want to say the words.

Children should have access to knowledge about how their bodies and brains function. This would help kids feel less ostracised and alone, and prevent a lot of pain and trauma in the world.

[saintsenara]

bunch of questions for war of roses: obviously i have my own thoughts about the blood motif that is present in the chapter. what was your intention with it? i know you wrote an entire post about why this is called the war of roses. but i am most curious about roses being walburga's favourite flower, and her watching the undulating roses in mourning clothes. It is such a striking image - and it appears in two of your fics. thoughts?

thank you very much for the ask, pal! it seems that chapter one of the war of the roses can be summed up pretty accurately by dear old film!ginny...

and the answer, as you are becoming familiar with via our conversations in the deathly hallows bookclub, is that both the theme of blood and the characterisation of walburga are driven by my belief that the way the series presents the body, illness, and disability fucking sucks.

why is there so much blood?

obviously, one reason for the motif of blood is as a visual metaphor for the social context: the wizarding world is obsessed with class, heredity, and lineage; sirius spent his youth trying to escape those forces but has been shoved back into his childhood home, made to confront the fact that half the people trying to murder his found family are his blood relatives, and face being reminded constantly by his mother's portrait that his decision to turn his back on his parents' blood supremacy is considered to be a stain on his entire line. the blood being leached daily from him against his will when he brushes his crumbling teeth and spits onto his mother's expensive porcelain is one way of showing the effect this is having on his mental state...

but something which will also be a prominent theme in this story is the fact that twelve years in azkaban must have been physically ruinous for sirius. all too often, the harry potter series dismisses or minimises the concept of physical illness or disability - all injuries are easily healed; all physical disabilities, such as moody's loss of his eye, are rendered obsolete by magic.

the series' main focus when it comes to illness or disability is the impact of these things on cognition - and on how the series understands cognitive function to connect to magical ability. [think lockhart, the longbottoms, ariana dumbledore, etc...]

the series also - even though it does purport to think that the soul and the will are separate things [voldemort's horcruxes do not diminish his extraordinary power or intelligence] - connects cognitive function to the soul, as we see in the fact that the dementor's kiss causes something akin to brain stem death.

azkaban, then, is set up in canon as something which primarily impacts the cognitive state of its inmates - especially by forcing them into a state which mirrors the symptoms of major depression and which has them constantly worrying about their souls being eaten. but it also clearly damages them enormously physically too. both sirius and bellatrix are described as 'gaunt' after their escape - and while the prisoners' loss of appetite may be caused by the psychological force of the dementors, starvation is also a physically damaging process. the fact that the prison is frequently described in canon as being poorly maintained and in the middle of a freezing ocean will also have a physical impact on the people confined there - in terms of making them more susceptible to respiratory illness, circulation problems etc. - alongside its mental one.

physical decay and injury is rarely shown in the series - which is strikingly resistant to gore of any kind - but the war of the roses isn't. sirius is losing so much blood - in his urine, from his gums - because his body is a wreck after his time in prison, and his experience of what can be meaningfully described as chronic illness will be a key theme of the piece.

[what's wrong with his leg remains to be seen...]

why is walburga transfixed by the image of roses?

one of the things which i think it's crucial to bear in mind about the canonical walburga - and, indeed, something which is the central theme of a planned in defence of walburga black meta i have sitting in my drafts - is that her primary purpose in canon isn't to be a real person, but to be one of the amalgamation of various different gothic literary tropes which make up grimmauld place.

indeed, the walburga of order of the phoenix and deathly hallows isn't so much a character as she is a piece of worldbuilding. she's a spectre haunting her son. she exists exclusively to increase the sinister atmosphere of grimmauld place and, above all, to hammer home the point that the house is a semi-sentient prison which is driving sirius slowly mad and which is the direct cause of the depression and restlessness which will eventually lead him to disobey the order to stay put, go to the department of mysteries, and meet his death. [except that hasn't happened here!]

this is - of course - the same purpose served by lots of other women in gothic or quasi-gothic stories. walburga is like rebecca de winter - who exists only as a memory designed to torture others. she's bertha rochester, rattling around the attic and attempting to ruin the man-of-the-house's happiness.

which means that my reading of her has always been heavily influenced by those texts which can be used to challenge and/or recontextualise the figure of the woman in the gothic novel. above all, charlotte perkins gilman's the yellow wallpaper, in which a mentally ill woman becomes obsessed by the pattern on the wallpaper in a room to which she is confined. as i've said in the notes to lamentation - the other piece of writing on walburga which uses this motif - i really don't like the fanon of 'black family madness', and i much prefer to think of walburga as someone who suffers from depression, which would be treatable if anybody cared enough to help her.

why roses specifically? well, the flower has an extremely prominent role in the english imagination - especially as a symbol of nobility and of feminine beauty [the english rose archetype]. it seemed a good choice for someone who is clearly so profoundly affected by the twin pressures of class and gender.

[why she constantly wears mourning clothes remains to be seen...]

[monty-glasses-roxy]

Replying to this in a new post because this AU post is already super long:

Yeah I was thinking that! Maybe the word you're after is 'metaphor'? Not sure but I do get you!

Roxy being stuck in a school that expects a bare minimum that she physically can't reach is absolutely a kind of 'disability in a school setting' situation.

What I was thinking for the world was that magic and non-magic IS a fully integrated and combined thing, but some schools are primarily for magic while others are primarily for non-magic. Roxy in this case, lives in an area where magic is the norm. The only schools nearby are magic based and this one in particular was the only one that would accept her as a non-magic user.

This situation gives her a hell of a lot of resentment because she's now on a purely magic based education path, when she absolutely shouldn't be, and making the switch to a non-magic path is going to be a lot harder the longer she's at the school. If she's ever going to be able to be in a non-magic school, she's going to have to work so much harder to catch up on everything she's missed, like if you change your study course halfway through the school year. Or like in my English Lit class that was the only one in the school studying war poems and Macbeth, so anyone that got moved to that class had to learn it very quick (though our teacher was decent and put time aside to help them continue studying the Romeo and Juliet stuff instead) and all those that were moved out of the class had to drop Macbeth and learn Romeo and Juliet. They also had no choice, your clas was decided on your ability so uh yeah that was poorly thought out.

It's like that for Roxy now, except on a larger scale and she's unable to switch paths unless they move house to somewhere that has the proper school for it. And she's rightfully angry about the fact she's being held to a standard she can't meet. She gets minimal support for this problem, despite the school boasting about its support programs, and is largely left to slip through the cracks.

She has to navigate a world designed for her to fail and she doesn't know how to do that. She tries finding ways to give herself the same abilities as everyone else, like trying to cure the problem but she can't. It's just not possible. She doesn't want exceptions being made because they single her out further. Extra time and someone there to explain things to her does not make a practical exam for casting spells any easier. It feels condescending, like they've decided because she doesn't have magic, she must be stupid or that she's just not trying hard enough.

Roxy's got her anger issues too and it's no wonder. She can come up with solutions, and work arounds, but she's still considered incorrect. She's not given time or opportunity to come up with solutions either, and is just expected to solve the problems over night. She can push for non-magical sports clubs so she has a chance to excel at something but magic is more important than her. She's the only one that can't use magic after all, so they have to prioritise the needs of the many over the needs of the few, right? Look, she may not have magic, but if everyone else can manage, then so can she! Simple as! I mean, that famous person without magic did it, so why can't she?

And then I thought, this would exclude other people too. It never just effects one person, even if that's the intention. What about the ones that struggle with magic? The ones that are slow at understanding it? The ones that find it exhausting but still have to rely on it? The ones that are being locked out of the things they want to do, just because they have magic and that's a non-magic interest? The ones that could be great at one type of magic, but struggle in another and are thus, penalised for it? Fuck it, what about those with non-magic issues that can't be solved with the one size fits all magic/non-magic solutions? What about the people that just plain suck at magic stuff or don't want to pursue it? What about the attitude that whatever you're doing would be easier with magic, so why don't you just use magic? Why would you want to do it any other way? Why would you question something that is clearly, objectively, the correct way to do it? Everyone struggles from time to time you'll get there!

What about all these other people that slip through the cracks? Roxy thought she was the only one labelled as a failure and being dropped by the system, but through her efforts, she can find that she's not the only one. There's plenty of other kids that are also struggling with this system, she's not as alone as she thought she was. She may try and push it all away because struggling to do something is not the same as being completely unable to even try and do something, but ultimately, they're in the same system designed for them to be miserable.

Maybe they have workarounds that she hasn't thought of yet? Maybe her own workarounds give them ideas on how to do it too? Learning through eachother that it's okay to not be the perfect student and that the system doesn't define you, and maybe that if they cause enough of a ruckus, they can change it just a little bit in their favour? Or maybe it's a case of Roxy's efforts to change what she is, and then her efforts to make a space for her to fit in that draws the others to her? Maybe it's a case of her not realising that she's somehow managed to surround herself with people that are also being destroyed by the powers that be? The realisation could hit and she could get a whole new flavour of anger on their behalf but also feel so fucking relieved that she's not on her own here...

And maybe the others don't realise it either? Maybe a few of them keep comparing themselves to Roxy and feeling like they don't have it that bad so they're clearly just not trying hard enough? Maybe they think Roxy is just a trouble maker and doesn't care until they discover that, no, she's been tearing herself apart to try and cure the incurable because to her, that was her only option? They see parts of their struggles in Roxy and they want to talk about them too but don't know how, since clearly they have nothing in common... The similar stuff must just be overlap or something with the normal, everyday experience, right?

I don't know how they could decide to try and do something about the situation. Maybe Roxy finally cracks and starts talking to her parents or a guest speaker comes in and talks about how to make changes in the world? Maybe her latest attempt to give herself magic goes horribly wrong and she's left screaming in desperation until someone finally listens? All those people she didn't realise were friends running in to help her when it all starts crushing her like a bug under a boot?

I dunno. There's some good story to be had here though for sure

[mayadoesfandomstuff]

Goddd why is the internet so tiring sometimes like it's a poll about CATS!!! Why the fuck are you trying to push your weird anti-minecraft cringe culture beliefs on it and even more just parroting whatever the fuck you've heard from twitter in order to paint all minecraft youtubers as "problematic" just because there was some problematic people in the genre like hello???

There's assholes in every demographic yet somehow because this one cat is owned by a creator who makes content for a genre you don't like, he MUST be problematic and therefore his CAT too

It's genuinely upsetting and honestly such fun polls gets sullied by shitty people who just hate anyone who dares touch one of the most popular video games in the past decade because of a couple of bad eggs in the community. They don't even have to have interacted with these bad eggs, they just have to have just so happen to make videos about the same video game as them.

Scar BARELY has anything to do with most problematic content creators and yet he and his deceased cat still gets dragged by people who find minecraft cringe and hide it under the guise of thinking any and every minecraft youtuber is simply problematic therefore it's okay to harass them and their fans and spread hatred towards their pets ackshully.

He is legitimately one of the most wholesome minecraft creators in the platform that had constantly inspired many disabled people because of his positivity and his frankness about his experiences with both his physical and mental disabilities and experiences with the medical industry, both positive and negative. All of this doesn't matter though because he plays minecraft so he must be someone who agrees with problematic minecraft youtuber man #34 so he's definitely problematic even if I don't know anything about him. And his cat, Jellie, regardless of how you feel about Scar himself or if he is worth redeeming just because he plays minecraft with his friends, gets thrown under the bus for simply being the pet of this creator because she's just some rando cat of a minecraft youtuber so of course I should also hate her. Oh she died? Well sucks to suck because she's still some youtuber's cat. How problematic of her.

This also happened in other polls like the one from a few months ago with Jimmy being shitted on by outsiders from the fandom to the point that the person who was running the poll had to remove him because of the harassment that they were receiving. This is despite the fact that Jimmy is genuinely one of the most inoffensive minecraft youtubers out there who actively scolds his friends for even making light innuendos whenever they play. "Being bad at video games isn't being doomed by the narrative" says the fans of TTRPG youtube series which is based on game strategy and random chance and has some similarities with sandbox games. And of course, he's also problematic because he plays minecraft. Nevermind you don't actually known anything about him, his character, or the story that people are referring to. He plays minecraft therefore he is problematic.

It happened with other polls like the trans swag poll where people were so giddy to misgender REAL LIFE trans people (not just the characters they played) just because these other fans' FICTIONAL blorbos were up against them in the polls. They would assume any and all people who had ever created minecraft content are cis simply just because of, again, some bad actors that they had or had not associated with in the past. It doesn't matter if they had not spoken about or even actively denounced this bad actor either, they played with that person once upon a time so therefore misgendering them isn't transphobic guys I swear! They're just cringe problematic cis people they couldn't possibly be trans! and if they are they're the bad kind of trans so it's totally cool to misgender them!

I'm not even asking people to like minecraft youtubers or change their minds about perpetuating this new kind of cringe culture but just questioning what is it that makes the term "minecraft youtuber" make these people just assume the worst, and, even further, resort to VILE comments and behavior that border on outright bigotry? Why is it that seeing "minecraft youtubers" make these people think that harassment and hatred sent to the fans and even just the poll makers is justified regardless of the actual stance of the person that had brought them up? Why do these people think that it's appropriate or even funny to make jokes about dead pets or to jokingly misgender trans people just because they're associated with the term "minecraft youtuber"?

I don't know

This won't be rebloggable

I'm tired

[titan-god-helios]

vent post lol

i think arguably one of the worst aspects of being autistic is the cycle of shallow friendships. you meet someone you vibe with, you have a nice interaction with them. next, it goes one of two ways: they want to interact again and you really like them as a person but you just don’t have the energy to spend on that relationship or you don’t see it going for long, or you want to pursue that relationship, for whatever reason. if it’s the second, then great !! you guys hit it off, maybe even become friends with their friends. then gradually, they start to fail you, in little ways. whether they know it or not. maybe it’s that they invited you to a hangout and you were really looking forward to it and then all of a sudden the day before the hangout one goes “sorry i don’t want to go out anymore” and everyone agrees. and you know it might not be their fault, or even just them being tired and you know you have no right to feel hurt but you do. because you were ready to expend so much energy for those people. because they made the plans even though they knew they wouldn’t end up going. slowly, you drift apart again. become a friend on the edge. the only one offering to hang out or talk and each time getting rejected. then you decide it’s no longer worth your energy to stress and try and interact despite your literal disability and suddenly they turn it on you. “where were you at lunch ?” “why weren’t you online yesterday ?” “i thought we were friends, why are you acting like this ?” “you’re making me feel like a bad person !” and it starts again, because they must want you as a friend if they start asking, right ? and you have no one else so you might as well.

and once in a while, maybe a couple years, a decade even, someone comes along who is truly a perfect friend, companion, partner - whatever. and as it goes on there’s always this sinking feeling that something is going to go wrong and you’re going to lose this perfect person who you’ve put all your time and energy into because you physically aren’t capable of having more than a couple shallow friends at once, and if there is someone that clicks, all of the energy is automatically redirected to them.

and then that day comes, and you fuck up, or something breaks you apart, and you no longer have them. and it hurts. so much. because you held them in the highest esteem, you had a special corner of your mind and heart for them and now they stopped visiting. and it hurts more since you know that those corners will never stop being there. you’ll never stop dusting off the shelves, and washing the blankets and couch cushions and mopping the floor in hopes that one day they’ll return and you won’t be so lonely anymore. you won’t be stuck, stranded without that one perfect person you needed to survive and to thrive and who you loved interacting with and giving to and helping them and enjoying life with them.

it sucks. and it sucks even more when it’s in a situation where you know they’re probably hurting too. where you don’t know if their corners for you will ever stop being ready for you, or if they’ll disappear altogether.

[agentkikirogers]

Mentions of implied rape sayings and well ableism of course.

I went to a "doctor" yesterday and we were talking about other amputee patients they had. They mentioned one who had cancer out of nowhere and lost both legs above the knee. He said the man was very healthy and would do marathons and had a beautiful fiance. He expressed sympathy for the fiance on how "tough it'll be for her". Um, for her? Yeah sure all parties will deal with what happened but the man is the biggest focal point.

He mentioned another man this one in his 70s and married to his wife for a long time until he lost his leg and she left him. The elder said he couldn't blame her.

Being on dating sites are hard too after a disability in my opinion. People constantly tell me "I don't need anyone to be happy". Okay so why do YOU have someone? That line hits different when you are disabled. Another is "I see tons of disabled folks on tv/YouTube that are married or have kids you can too!" Or suggest you should date another (same or similar) disabled person.

So you go on sites. Now I have more than just a leg loss so there's other things to disclose and talk about. Unfortunately I have alot of health issues on top of being an amputee. Nevertheless people are nice but no bite. People look at you different and treat you lesser than an abled bodied person.

"Man you must be easier to access now without legs" or "you cant run away from anyone now thats the perfect woman" is not a compliment but extremely rape vibes. There's fetishers too. My friends have them often I've encounter a few but it's uncomfortable. Asking to do things with our "stumps" (hate that word but) is really creepy. Why would you want someone to not escape? "Can you have sex still if you are disabled?" For most of us, yeah. Also why is it a burden to date us? Look at Shane and Hannah. Why do people assume someone is dating us for money or other nefarious reasons? Interabled relationships do happen and CAN last. Some of us do need a caregiver and sometimes our partner can take care of us but still be with us.

For me I don't need a caregiver so someone wouldn't really have to take care of me. The only thing I would neeed help with is outdoor chores or things requiring ladders. I wouldn't say dating somebody that is disabled is a burden there's a lot of situations that you might have to deal with when it comes to their mental health if anything or just the physical limitations but even dating another abled person comes with limitations and dealing with hardships so we're just similar in that aspect.

I would say that dating disabled in the gay community is harder than in the straight community in my opinion just from stories that I've heard from other queer folk about it and I can see why it would be and it sucks that it would happen more in that Community than a straight Community you would think that we would be more open and accepting of others that are different than the societal "Norm".

What are you thoughts? Disabled or abled comments are encouraged.

[dragonmistressivy]

I want to die. We had to get up at like 5 oclock and i only got 4 hours of sleep. Also we went to the beach again for like 2 hours. Somehow everyone is still just as hairless including the guys. Whoch i don’t understand. I know my roommates aren’t shaving so how the fuck are they still nigh hairless when i have hair literally 2 days after i shave my body. Also they haven’t shaved their faces once but have almost no facial hair. Please fate why must i have fucking trouble genetics? Also the trans girl i mentioned seems to be a ok with wearing a bikini. I wish i looked like her. I will never be pretty. How dare fate make me hate myself more by showing me people who have the better version of my life. It seems she doesn’t feel dysphoric. Also not a good thing but she misgenders the trans guy which is odd because she is trans and they have been sharing a room a few times so you who think he would tell her especially given he is openly out. I mean his father misgenders him constantly which sucks for him. Unfortunately i am jealous of him. He got the perfect body for a trans guy and also he also doesn’t seem to feel dysphoria i mean he was a ok with going swimming with swim truck and a tank top. I wish i could just have a body i could like. My body just can’t be fixed or even repaired completely. Also both of them have partners with alex(the trans guy)’s gf on the trip with him. The trans girl(i should learn her name but i haven’t talked to her yet for multiple reasons. First i look like a guy and a weird guy at that, second i am almost 18 so me just talking to her would be weird in general, and third i can’t talk to strangers) also has her gf on the trip with her. I am unloced and unwanted. I don’t even have friends and everyone around me has partners and friends and loved ones. I have none of those. This trip is taking my want to die right this second from maybe a 8 or 9 out of 10 to like a 50 out of 10. Why did i sign yp for this two years ago. Also the little bit of repuption i have has been destroyed by this trip because i have been in so much pain and have been complaining nigh constantly about it so i look off and i hate it. Also can people not graduate me for doing things that others can do easily because all it does it make me feel different and worse and that makes me want to die. Also i just hurt all over and Tylenol hasn’t been helping. I hate it. I just want to be home. This trip is shorting my life. I will probably die sooner than later than i excepted. My mental and physical health is being destroyed by this trip. I want to jump from the balcony but it wouldn’t’t be tall enough to die me just tall enough to make me a paraplegic. I can’t become more disabled than i already am. And if my life continues my body will fsll apart and it already feels like it is and i have done nothing to cause it to feel that way. I don’t smoke, i don’t drink, i don’t party, i don’t do dangerous things, i don’t do drugs, i don’t have sex, i have done nothing to cause my body to feel like it is falling apart already. Some of the pain my mom complains about having i have and she is like “wait until you are in your 40s and your back will be in pain”. My back is already in pain most of the time along with most of my body. I just hurt almost 24/7. My body is a failure whoch i am trapped in just to suffer until i die. My life will never be good or even decent. My body is a failure and a mistake. I should not have been born. If it weren’t for modren medicine i would not be suffering 24/7. I just want to be happy and painfree but that will never happen. Not in this life time. I just want to have a new life where i am able bodied, cis girl, rich, and have friends, partner/partners, and loved ones. Or just the bare minimum of able bodied cis girl. I will end myself some day but i am trying to prolong my death until i can 100% die. I don’t want to be trapped here worse off unable to do anything. If only my bio parents didn’t have sex or even if just my bio mom never did drugs.

Her life would be better and all the kids she has birthed wouldn’t suffer. I don’t like suffering. No longer my brother tried to commit twice. Been years since he did that but he did try. I will not be stopped when i eventually do. It will probably after i move to college so i can be in a large city and jump from a tall building. I am never getting a driver’s license because of the way i look. I will be dead before i turn 20 hopefully. I want out. I want to cut but i can’t because don’t have any knives with me. I want to do some drugs. I can’t i just want to not feel any pain and feel good. I want to be happy and painless. I am never going to be either unfortunately. My therapy is going to hsve been a waste of money along all the surgeries i hace gotten or all the other things they have spent money on me. I am a waste of money and time. Why can’t i just die? Why? Please. I want out but i can’t get out. I hate it. Also we are going to the again tomorrow so i will be in worse mental health than i am now. I want to go home please. I just want to go home. There is 8 more days of misery minus the flights back home. I can’t see my therapist until the 17th. I need to see her right just very second. I want to be happy. I am not. This tour is getting worse by the minute for my mental health and i am making it miserable for everyone around me. I should never have came on this trip. If i am alive by this school year i am going to a different school no matter what unless i drop out and go die. I literally just see my death in my near future and it is looming over me and i want it to take me please. I am glad i have the room all to myself at the moment. Ny roommatesare swimming in the pool. This hotel is fancy for some reason. Unfortunately only staying here tonight. I just want to go home but we can’t until everyone else goes home because that would be a waste of money and most of the tickets home are sold out anyways. I am never leaving the country again at least not temporarily. I am never going on a trip again. Literally everyplace we have been feels exactly like how it feels when seeing a picture of it so i could have just looked up the places and feel the same but with less pain and suffering and no money wasted. We have wasted around 6.5k dollars on me to go on this trip. I would have preferred to just have that money to buy stuff i want or to save up for surgeries instead of a trip which is making me even more suicidal and in pain. One of the surgeries i want is only like 5k so i could have used that money to get it as soon as i turned 18. Also i want laser hair removal so the money could have been used for that once i turn 18 as well. I still hate how a few months ago my parents made an awful joke about getting me laser hair removal for Christmas. I will never forgive them for that. They got my hopes up and burned in two sentences. I hate them. They only care for my physical health and not even completely about that. The literal only reason i have therapy is because we dis the sos(signs of suicide) lesson like every year and just time on the survey i answered that i have felt suicidal so they basically told my mom to get me a therapist so she did because she doesn’t want me dead. Too bad she is going to have a dead daughter someday and not a living son. I will be gone someday and they will feel sad that they made my life worse and made me want to die so many fucking times and that they ignored almost sll the warning signs. They even make fun of my depression which makes me want to like stab them or something. Like please stop. Also can my mom not basically shame me for hating myself and not wearing a swimsuit to the beach. I want her dead. I want gone. I just fucking suffer. I hate it in this world. I want out now please.