lyssajanet:

My mom doesn’t understand why I can’t just call to order pizza or ask if a video game store has a game. I want to show her this, so if you at all get nervous about calling strangers on the phone, please reblog this. 

My number one fear.

“Can’t you just…”

Nope. I can’t. 

shonilane:

kwisten:

fibromyalgiaproblems:

“But don’t let your illness stop you!!!1!1!!”

I’m not “letting” my illness stop me it just plain IS stopping me it’s an ILLNESS it makes me ILL that’s what it DOES.

Everyone needs to read this.

Seriously. If I had that much control over my illness, I wouldn’t fucking be ill, now would I?

It’s like, honey, I don’t let my illness do anything, and thinking about unicorns farting rainbows or whatever other bullshit motivational speech you’re about to give me ain’t gonna change that.

Sorry I don’t walk around as human inspiration porn, facing shitty fucking things with a smile so YOU don’t have to feel sorry for me, as if I’m wanting you to to begin with.

textbookboy:

“I don’t see you as disabled,” she tells me, which I know is supposed to be a compliment.

Here’s the thing: It’s not. “I don’t see you as disabled” is not and will never be a compliment, although it’s always said with the best of intentions, although it’s always said as a positive thing, and although we hear it all the time. It always comes from well-meaning, able-bodied friends and family, from people who genuinely believe that by telling us this they’re giving us something bright to take with us, the notion that they see us as able-bodied, too.

The first insinuation behind that statement is, intentionally or not, that there is something wrong with being disabled. That if they saw us as disabled, if they acknowledged the issues - however our bodies display their flaws - that would be a bad thing. The implication is that being able-bodied is inherently better than being… not, and furthermore that all disabled people are a certain way - what does “being seen as disabled” mean, anyway? I thought the increasing visibility of my condition would eliminate these things, but I’ve had the opposite experience. The more clear my disability becomes (from walking independently, to cane, to forearm crutches, and now to a wheelchair) the more I hear it. It’s as if AB people have a need to reassure me that it’s okay that I’m a chair user, or a crutch user, or that I have a service dog - it’s okay, don’t worry, poor disabled boy, we see you just like one of us.

Perhaps the bigger problem is erasure.

The bigger problem, in my eyes, is the fact that by telling me you don’t see me as disabled, you wipe away all of the issues I face every single day of my life. Not in terms of my health - though that is frustrating too, the willful waving away of all of the things I go through just to get my body out of bed in the morning and functioning to some degree - but socially. Two days ago, I sat outside a store with a set of double manual doors, because a half-inch high lip at the door meant that I couldn’t pull the door open AND get myself through it at the same time. I waited around till someone else came along and opened the door for me so I could get into the building. While in the car with friends, the same group who told me “I don’t see you as disabled,” they pulled into a standard parking spot and got out to start heading inside, and they said “Are you coming?” when they realized I was still seated. “Yes,” I said, “once you move the car so I can actually get out.”  I once had to go down three stories worth of stairs on my ass with a friend tailing behind me, carrying my mobility aids, because the lone elevator in my school building was broken and the only other one, you needed a “pass” to use. I was refused.

If you don’t see me as disabled, the likelihood that you are going to take into account my struggles increases tenfold.

Moreso than that are the difficulties in other areas. Bigger areas. “I don’t understand why you’re having such a tough time finding a job,” well, not wanting to hire people with disabilities is a major factor in our unemployment rate. I tried applying for disability (and was denied) some years ago not because I physically cannot work any kind of job, but because I could find nobody to hire me based on disability alone. You could see them discount me the moment I headed in the door. “Why don’t you just move out of your parents’ already if you don’t like it?” A lot of us don’t have that luxury, and even if we wanted to, the ease of finding housing that is not only affordable but accessible is slim to none.

Everything becomes a struggle. I spent nearly a year mostly in bed because insurance refused to cover a wheelchair that I desperately needed. Others are denied more important things - lifesaving or stabilizing medication. The fight for disability, if you can’t work, is long and stressful and agonizing, a months-long prying into every bit of your personal life and every bit of your records from the last however many years until finally, more often than not, they turn around and tell you “No, sorry. You are not disabled enough for help.”

And this is all from the perspective of a mobility impaired person with secondary psychological issues that I chose not to touch on here. I can’t speak for those with intellectual or developmental disabilites because I have neither - but the rates of wrongful arrest, death, and institutionalization are alarmingly high.

When you say “I don’t see you as disabled,” what you’re really saying is “I refuse to acknowledge your struggles in our society.”

Please read this.

Seriously, please.

twentythreefour:

Big hug today to all my friends with shitty, absent, and/or abusive dads.