Impotent Blog of RAGE - Unedited version

Yeah, so. Basically, I’m pretty sure I got fired because I have a disability. I mean, it’s not explicitly stated, but only inasmuch as the reason they gave was, “it’s not things we feel will change.” and when I pressed, “how could you know what will change after three weeks?” the response was “… We don’t legally HAVE to give you a reason after only three weeks. And this is all we’re comfortable telling you.” And in my experience, “this is totally legal.” means “if we tell you the truth, it would probably NOT be totally legal.” Like, when my landlords were kicking me out of my apartment in the middle of the month (illegal) and had the gall to tell me if I was going to stay to the middle of the month, I would just have to pay them, as normal (illegal) because they wanted to change my apartment into office space, and I stood their like a fish going, "WTF?" she just kept repeating that they were giving me exactly as much notice as was LEGALLY expected, and also  that they've known this was coming for a while, but they wanted to make sure to do it LEGALLY. So, y'know. I'm not stupid. Since I wasn’t breaking any laws, and the most controversial thing I said while there was “I hate Starbucks” I’m gonna assume they think the fact that I did not learn enough during FOUR DAYS of training is because I CAN’T learn.

Not to say there weren't issues. I know I was struggling with two things in the office, two things which I asked repeatedly could I get some help with this? I am not getting this. I know there were two very busy days in which the person who had trained me (Who the hell does four days of training?) was not in, and I had to ask the only other person in the office to help me with these things, which were not being explained to me. I also know I worked very hard to socialize and be normal and comfortable, because everybody was all, "we're one big family here, it's okay, get comfortable." except not really. But I genuinely liked the people, and I thought I was liked back. I felt like I was learning, and I was working hard, making notes on EVERYTHING, so that I could solidify things in ways that worked for me. Apparently, other people do things faster. Which, well, story of my life. I could have told them that. If they'd bothered to ask.

The ironic thing about this is not that it is actually wrong to discriminate against people with disability WHETHER YOU DO IT OUT LOUD OR NOT. Also not the fact that I was assured because the boss lady ALSO has a chronic condition, she is “more than sympathetic.” (which is bullshit, btw. People who develop chronic conditions later in life can sometimes handle it HORRIFICALLY badly, and in fact often reach a stage they have to wade through where they are suddenly faced-to-face with their own prejudices, because they are not like those people! Hell, I have a condition I was born with, and even I've had to do that.) But nine times out of ten, a person with a disability will be able to find a different way of doing something. If you tell them what they are doing wrong, and let them work that out on their own. But people are so terrified that they will actually mention something that can’t be changed, and therefore BE discriminatory (WHICH IS WRONG WHEN IT’S OUT LOUD!) and so conditioned to believe that we use our disability to excuse anything, they decide we are not worth the effort. And then the government makes everyone pay taxes to keep the housing list at a three year minimum wait, and our families go deeper in debt trying to make up the difference, and keep YOU all complaining about how lucky we are to get free money, especially when most of us are faking it anyway.

But of course, I’m probably just being paranoid. I mean, we’re always looking for excuses, aren’t we?

I hate the world.

What is and is not political

So I just read this.  First, if you're not following Drew on Twitter even just for the giggles, you need to be doing that. But also read his blog, because there is some really good stuff there. And then  a few days later WriteWorld posted some really great stuff about othering, to go along with previous great stuff about "writing the other" and if you are not following Drew, you should be, but if you are not following WriteWorld, you are not yet half the writer you could be. Get on that. (though, granted, if you are a writer and you are not following WriteWorld because you are not on Tumblr, then you have more self control than I will ever possess, but I swear, this is not me leading you astray.) And then in response to all of that I wrote this post. And then, because of the aforementioned mental illness, it sat on my dash for a much longer time then I intended it to. Sorry about that. Here it is now, in all it's glory!

As you have undoubtedly seen over the last few weeks, I also suffer from mental illness. I am generally a very high functioning depressive anxiety sufferer. I have a job (FINALLY OMG THREE MONTH JOB SEARCH SUCKED SO MUCH!!!) And when I'm not working I occupy my days with studying and writing, and other busy make-work stuff. I like to do things. This may not seem like it could be true of an anxiety sufferer, but it is, in fact, the reality. I like to move around. I like to have things always coming up. It stops me from believing the crap people say about people with disabilities.

I've written a few times about being a person with a disability, and how that has shaped me as a writer. Also, I have written how difficult it is to write a person with a disability. It's something I've been struggling with for a long while. Most times, my main characters aren't people with disabilities, but I'll have someone with a disability in the background. This part isn't because I'm scared of it being mistaken for me. It's generally because when you put a person with a disability up front and centre, you first have to explain that person, because you have to assume enabled people are going to read your book. You have to explain things they might have to do differently, and then you have to explain all the things that aren't different. And that can sometimes be the harder thing to do.

I have both a visible disability, and an invisible mental illness. So I'm in a bit of a weird position.
It's tough to have a mental illness. It's tough to hear that a person who is generally happy and optimistic can have a mental illness like depression, and understand that it isn't about positive thinking. But in the last seven months, the tough part of my mental illness has been the really depressing stuff that I'm not actually wrong about. It's having to separate the feeling that I don't deserve to be stuck on the system, that I should have been able to get my education, that people who love me the most are the people who have been lying to me my whole life about what they think I'm capable of, with the fear that it's always going to be this way, there's nothing I can do about it, and I probably should have died as a baby like all the doctors thought would be best. (Yes. That happened. Depression sucks, you guys.)

Recently, I had a discussion with someone. She is a friend of mine, who has read my work before. She mentioned, in the pseudo-casual way, why I always put people with disabilities in the background of my story. I explained my reticence to put them in the foreground, and that I was sort of trying to work my way out of that. She said "No. That's not what I meant. I mean, you always write them in. I'm just thinking it might be distracting just to have them there, when you don't talk about it."

"Well, that's sort of the point. I don't think about the actual diagnosis. It doesn't matter, it's not part of the story."

"Well, isn't that a bit too political? People aren't going to want to read it, like that. You can't just have them in there for no reason."

Here's the thing: I grew up with people with disabilities. That is one half of the world I was straddling. Those are my friends. I put people with disabilities in the background of the story, because mine has been the background of my life. I'm lucky. It doesn't consume everything I do, except when it does, except when it's supposed to. Because yes, at summer camp we would occasionally talk about symptoms and diagnosis, but mostly we talked about boys, and clothes, and school subjects and horrible teachers, and bands we liked. And yet every single one of us were aware that two weeks a year was the most normal we could squeeze into our lives, and we were supposed to pretend we didn't know that.

When my depression and anxiety is at it's absolute best, I still have to be afraid what people see and don't see. Because I am physically weaker than almost everyone I know, including my sister, who is 3 inches shorter than I am, my friends, who forget because they "don't see me like that." and my ten year old nephew, who doesn't understand when I don't roughhouse with him. I have to be aware of those things, because everyone else doesn't want to know, so I have to cover it up. Just like have to be aware that the whole world thinks my life is depressing, even when my depression is so bad it's the worse of the two conditions. I have to remind people there are good things about being born like this even on the days when I can't get out of bed long enough to eat.

Nobody wants to know that I actually don't mind being disabled, that my legs don't hurt as much as they used to, that I've been able to travel on my own, that I do things on my own because that's how I like doing them, not in some bid for "independence". They don't want to know about my friends who've got married, or had kids, or have jobs a hell of a lot better than the one currently tiding me over. Because they don't want to know that this is not the problem. I went for years without a diagnosis, because it seemed pretty obvious why a kid with a disability might be sad. Sometimes, that was used as the excuse to bully me, "well, there's not a lot we can do. She's different from the other kids."

I write people in the background with disabilities because they're in the background of my life, but also because they're in the background of yours. Because I know you don't want to look at us, and I deal with that knowledge every day, and you know what? It sucks, and I'd rather not have to hate you for it, because there are still more of you then there are of us, and I am not that misanthropic, not yet. I put us out there because I don't care what you want to know anymore. I put it out there because I still can't put it all up front, I'm not ready for that, you're not ready for that, and this is what I can do.

It's not my fault if I'm a political issue instead of a person. And I don't care- no, I hope- that makes somebody uncomfortable, somewhere. I think it's someone else's turn to be an uncomfortable reality. I dare you to write me one person with a disability who's just there because we are. Don't make excuses. I have to write people I don't identify with every day. Try it. You have no idea how needed it is.

But I do.

Examining Non-Typical Behavior part III: About "Teaching" and "Teachers"

And here we are again! Sorry it's been so long. Exams coming up. But I promised you one of my FAVORITE myths. Pay attention to this one. It’ll help a lot.

Myth 3: If you just teach a non-neurotypical person, they can learn how to be "normal."

Brace yourself, because I am about to say one of those really offensive things we are repeatedly told NOT to say.

You are not normal.

The problems with the assumption that a person with any kind of disability can be "taught" to function appropriately by a kindly and patient person who does not have a disability are so numerous that I could write several thousand words of rage covering the subject and still not be quite done with it. I promised myself I would not rage in this post, so I won't be doing that. What I do want to focus on with this is the assumption that any person with a disability obviously functions at a lower social level than any person without. Enabled people, round the world, listen up: 

You are not normal.

You have your own hang-ups, habits, and fears. You are sometimes over-sensitive. People have hurt you. Your expectations have been challenged. You have self-esteem issues. Your sense of self can be threatened. You can be passive-aggressive. You can have a morality message you deeply wish to impart. You are flawed. Whatever the reason, you are not always good mirrors of society as a whole. People who are non-neurotypical tend to try to behave toward individual people, the way they have been treated by those individual people, which goes back to why putting on social roles is so difficult for us to master. It also explains why we cannot treat you as you would treat other people.

Example: I once had a very passive-aggressive friend. She was one of those girls raised by women to believe that the reason those women did not treat her well was because, deep down, all women hated each other. So she was always very snarky and sharp with me, and unconsciously combative or competitive with me in public. I of course, could not, and did not compete, because I was mostly uncomfortable, but in private, when I was snarky, sharp or combative with her, she suddenly found that behavior offensive, and took to telling me the way I spoke to people was rude and I really needed to follow her lead, because I had no idea how horrible I could be. This came about because I honestly did not understand, in my high school years, why someone who considered me a friend would want to hurt me. Assuming she didn't intend to hurt me with things she did and said, as she said she didn't, I didn't think of my behavior toward her as being hurtful.

Same sort of thing, my dad and I had a hell of a time in my teenage years, because he was constantly telling us off for tiny little things, while regaling us with stories of his misspent youth driving motorcycles, tormenting college kids, smoking pot and dating three girls at once. Compared to him, I was a relative saint, but most kids know not to remind their parents that. Not so much me.

If you are hurt by something a non-neurotypical person does or says, I'm not saying, "Don't say anything, they can't help it." I"m saying watch your language. Lots of people with mental disabilities or other neurological differences take things far more literally than the rest of you. Ignoring it completely does not make it null and void, there are going to be times when you're going to be embarrassed by something zie has to say, or does, and just like with other people, you have to pick your battles. Say things like "I am pissed off right now." not the kind of thing I hear most often, which is, "I know you can't help it, but other people..." Because firstly, you don't know every other person, and non-neurotypical people are likely to take that literally, and assume every other person in the room is pissed at them, and secondly, we don't need you to do us any favours by putting up with us. It's just as hard for us to be friends with you. Social interaction is hard. We think you're worth it.

If we are not worth it to you, don't bother, we'll get over it. We don't look to you as teacher or as inspiration for what could be possible in our lives. Some of us are lonely, but it's not because there aren't a lot of people in our lives. There are a lot of people in our lives, and many of them take liberties they shouldn't. If we like you, it is because we think you are a good person we actually have things in common with. If you refuse to see a non-neurotypical person as an equal, well, my personal feeling is you're a pretty shit person, but experience has taught me, more than that, you are not worth the effort you require of me.

I'll be elaborating on the complications of the notion of the "teaching" and "inspirational" models of people with disabilities, as soon as I can get off my behind, and am not neck-deep in essays.

See you soon then!

Examining Nontypical Behaviors Part II: How To Behave In Public

Hi! See, I said I would be back, and here I am, I am getting better at this already! So again, I’m going off my own limited experience, and that of my friends, so if I miss something, or it’s different for you, please do add it in comments for me. This concerns the way non-neurotypical*, and also otherwise disabled people are talked about, and around, and most often at, and never really *to*.

Myth 2:  Non-neurotypical people don't realize they are behaving inappropriately, and if you tell them, they will stop.

Fact: Okay, this one's a bit dicey, if I'm honest. (And I always am, haha.) Imagine this for a second: You're invited to a fancy dinner party. You get all dressed up. When you get there, everyone else is dressed in their nicest clothes too. But when you sit down at the table, and the salad comes, there's no cutlery. People are eating, in their fanciest clothes, with their fingers. So you start doing it too, slowly and carefully, and trying not to look like you've never done this before. Then there's spaghetti and meatballs, and no cutlery. And then everybody starts eating with their fingers. They're all making a mess, sauces dribbling down their chins, clothes all stained with tomato. You're looking around, confused, for a minute, and you don't want to do it, you really like these clothes, but you think, "Oh well. Everyone else is doing it, must be fine." So you start eating with your hands. And you're getting into this, and getting comfortable, so that by the time dessert comes, you take one look at the big chocolate cake and you think, "Awesome!" And, completely missing the tiny dessert fork, you stick both hands in it. While everyone else looks on in horror. Because the fork is right there, and surely, you're not an animal.

That is how it feels for a non-neurotypical person all the time. Just when we think we have a handle on how things work, the rules change. We have to learn one set of rules for family and home, and one set of rules for the super-religious aunt who comes to visit once a month. We have one set of rules for the people we work with, but another for the boss. One set of rules for a boyfriend or girlfriend, another for casual friends, another for close friends. And to add to that, people who know about the diagnosis treat us different, from people who don't know, from people who actually understand what the diagnosis is, etc. So emulating other people? Is out. It is exhausting.  For you, it comes naturally. And we see that every day, but we don't see how you are doing what you are doing, and you can't tell us, if we ask, because it comes naturally to you. Just because you watch the same magic show 100 times, doesn't mean you're going to work out how to do the tricks. Some things we will remember, some of the time, but each time we make a new friend, meet a new person, find ourselves in another situation, what you call ‘common sense’ changes. Reminding us might help at that second, but it’s not likely to stick. Sorry.
This ties nicely into myth #3, which is one of my personal favorites, as it applies to any person, when they are friends with or working with, or tangentially aware of a person with ANY kind of disability or mental illness. Which I will get into sometime next week!

Still haven’t mastered actual deadlines. But I’m getting there!

* My love tells me there are better words to use than non-neurotypical, as it centres neurotypical as "normal." and so my language may offend people. I am, however, stubbornly atypical in all things, and like it that way. So the rest of you can go ahead and be typical, while I am over here playing with the fun crowd!

In Which I Embark On Something New

I have a hard time with this blog, because I talk too much. It's the exact same problem I have with Vampires. It's TOO LONG. I cannot possibly get it all right. So I decided, about a month ago, to chop it into smaller pieces, and then publish those pieces independently. It's working out really well. I don't want to shoot myself in the foot, but Book 1 is almost finished. So I think I will try to do that with this blog. Chop up longer posts into more manageable pieces.

To that end, I begin a series of blog entries.

I've been thinking a lot about Asperger's syndrome. Specifically, I've been thinking a lot about the fact that I don't have it.

I think.

I mean, I think I don't have Asperger's syndrome, if it's a syndrome in and of itself, but it's entirely possible my Cerebral Palsy is masking Aspergers syndrome, or I have a more severe form of Asperger's, which explains how I am able to do things most people with Cerebral Palsy cannot do. I am thinking about the fact that Cerebral Palsy is a catch-all term for brain damage causing muscular spasms and limited movement, and though it is considered to be a single thing, it is actually a collection of symptoms as many and varied as the ndividuals who embody it, not so much a condition but a symptom of a condition, in and of itself, and that we did not know that for years, and that Asperger's is similar, and also has similar symptoms, and it may be that I have Cerebral Palsy that behaves as Asperger's does, because similar parts of the brain are affected. And much of the time, I am thinking about the fact that I have an obsessive personality, and I will never never never know for sure who and what I am, and how, and sometimes, that has the ability to drive me more crazy than I am. I mean that literally, I sometimes sit and have panic attacks, not because there are things I can't fix, but because there are things I will never know for sure are actually broken. Sometimes.

But not all the time. Now that I can, with comfort and confidence, write about people with disabilities (I flatter myself to think that it is comfort and confidence that I am writing with, when it is, actually, simply the age-old "writing what you know"), I tend to write about nonspecific disabilities. Christine, for example, in the Damn Vampires, believes she has a rare sleep disorder called narcolepsy, when what she has is a strange virus, which is slowly turning her into a vampire. Last year's Nano, which I may or may not work with later on, featured twins, one of whom was decidedly not neurotypical, though no specific diagnosis was ever presented. I thought, particularly when writing this character, that might be considerably problematic. Part of the problem of being a person with a disability, is legitimizing that disability for other people. But the fact is, there is still a person under every diagnosis. And while I can appreciate the importance of a diagnosis in a medical sense, or in the sense of knowing what to do and what to expect, and certainly in the sense that society will hate us if there is no discernable reason to pity us, in a sense of intergration with wider society, a specific label does more harm than good.

This is what has me thinking about Asperger's. Because lately, it has been showing up a lot in the media, and usually, it's under the guise of "A guy who is a complete asshole but doesn't mean to be, and is totally antisocial/doesn't feel anything." And I feel, not only offended, as we're coming to the realization that it is not just a "man's condition" and also not that simple, but I feel a bit like we're all jumping the gun here. Nice as it is to see Asperger's portrayed at all (though generally by neurotypical people, which is. Oh, I could rage for several pages), it's a bit like what happened when psychiatrists uncovered schizophrenia and dissisociative identity disorder, and thought for years they were the same condition; we suddenly had a bunch of movies about the poor little crazy people, who killed because "the voices told them to do it," as if "voices" was, not only the defining characteristic of a person with the condition, but the only characteristic. Same with OCD. Until very, very recently, like, in the last five or so years, any film or television show, or vague mention in the media of a character or person with OCD, that person's only two symptoms were repeated handwashing, or repeating himself or herself (usually himself. For some reason, crazy women fail to illicit sympathy. Funny, that.) In fact, I had a friend with OCD who was germophobic, and as sensitive as I tried to be to her condition, whenever I had an issue of my own, she simply refused to believe I had OCD, because as "everyone knows" all OCD patients are germophobic. So all this saturation in Asperger's is a two-fold thing for me: Firstly, I think it's lovely that we are being shown non-neurotypically, but, as with most disability portrayals, they're not at all accurate, and I think, in about ten or fifteen years, we're going to be a bit embarrassed by them. At least I hope so.
So, as far as I know, I don't have Asperger's, and I'm not going to claim that I do. But I am not neurotypical, and I have many friends who are not neurotypical, and some of them have Asperger's, and some of them don't. And some of them have a diagnosis they will share, and some don't. But I did want to write a few helpful tips about the incredibly wrong assumptions neurotypical people tend to make about "others." So here goes.

1. Myth: Non-neurotypical people will say rude things, but it's okay because they don't mean it.

Fact: There are three parts to correct in this little untruth. Non-neurotypical people are not rude by nature. It's just our brains are wired differently than yours, and it's a bit exhausting for us keeping a filter all the time, and so sometimes, things slip out. Once, after a fight with a friend, where I told her I would not accept her apology, since I knew it was just an excuse to never talk about the argument again, I was proud to tell my mother I had not been rude. She told me I had been rude. I was absolutely flummoxed. I insisted could
not possibly be rude, since I hadn't actually said anything insulting, and what I had said, was true. She said, "Just because something is true, doesn't mean it's okay to say." To put this in perspective, I was not five years old at the time. I was 27. Further, apart from while I am having a panic attack, I never say anything I don't absolutely mean, and from what I have learned from friends, and from reading, that is fairly normal. Also, you should know, that some people who are not neurotypical can still be assholes. We are people. Each one is different. It's okay to dislike someone, even if they have a disability. It is not okay to dislike someone because of their disability, but is also not okay to like them for it.

Does anyone else get really annoyed at the fact that people think you don't mean what you say? Is anyone else getting a bit sick of the cliche "guy who says random rude things" under the excuse of Aspergers, in the media?

More later!

"The System" Or, The One Where I Am "Just Like Everyone Else," Except When I'm Not

Disclaimer: It's RAGE time again! Did you miss me? You know the drill. I rage, I swear. Get used to it or go home.

Also, this is a long one and there’s lots of tangents in it, but they are all important, because I didn’t know how much you needed to know. So. Feel free to take it in bits and pieces.

Oh, I am about to get SO much hate...

Because, people hate us. They really do. Those of us sponging off the government, I mean. Oh, how they hate us.

*sigh* Here we go.

So, a couple months ago I took a media course as part of my university courses. In that course, we were asked to choose a facet of the media to explore and examine, either in chronological or thematic order, and I chose the presence of disability in the media. I thought it was something that I knew about that a lot of people didn't, and it would be a good topic, since it is one often ignored completely.

It was a good topic. I got a good grade. It did not help with the depression.

It was months and months of wading through articles with headlines that read, "Blind student achieves top honors" where the article contained all the nauseating hero worship you find in such things, and quotes that read, "It's not that producers don't want to hire actors with a disability, it's just that there really aren't any good roles being written for them." While Kevin McHale giggles about the fact that "people actually thought I was disabled, OMG weird!" And then I found a few articles of particular interest to me. They were recent, and Canadian, and outlined a so-called scam which cost the government billions of dollars.

The scam was, apparently a company was posing as a charity, was getting people with disabilities to pay huge fees, and then doctoring paperwork to ensure those people got the maximum amount of money, with themselves taking a percentage.

Okay, here's what was actually happening:

This company had apparently begun its life as a charity, but eventually, had to start charging fees to avoid going out of business. Which it started doing about two years previous to this incident, apparently. The particular benefit being offered is not one I’m familiar with, but if it’s anything like say, the Disability Tax Credit, it had very strict guidelines of who could apply, and for what, and every form has to be signed and read by a doctor familiar with each applicant. Like everything else involving asking the government for money, it involves a lot of intimidating paperwork, and long waits. As far as I can glean, this company actually meets with the clients, who do pay for the service, to fill out the paperwork on their behalf and with their input. Which is a hell of a lot more accurate than leaving your paperwork with a doctor to get back to you in three months or so. Let’s try really hard to wrap this around our heads, shall we? Doctors know things about illnesses. They chiefly know about sickness, and how to end sickness, and the symptoms of a sickness, and the progression of a sickness. They also know about injury. They know the way an enabled person's body is put together. They understand that when something breaks or is damaged in that enabled person's body, there is an ideal way in which it should be put back together again.

Disability is neither sickness, nor injury.

Okay, admittedly most people with disabilities probably see doctors more than I do, as I am mostly in decent health. But people, including doctors, tend to forget many of us don't have progressive disabilities, and our illnesses and injuries are often no more related to our disabilities than our hair colour is related to our eye colour. Yes, I trip and fall and bruise myself more often than most people. I don't bruise more easily. My bones break when I fall, I fall because I have CP, CP does not cause broken bones. My doctor is not my specialist. She is my doctor as yours is yours. We are long gone from the days where we all lived in hospital care our entire lives. And good riddance to them. I have no idea why we still have this archaic practice of asking a doctor if we're really really really sure this person is disabled, when it is the person, not the doctor, who is ordered to ask for help, while doctors are reluctant to do so since they’re not specialists. I understand the need to prove a legitimate disability. When applying for OSAP I sent my ODSP paperwork without complaint just like everybody else. Because I could do that, because I receive my ODSP paperwork, and what I do with it, is my responsibility. Because somebody has to take responsibility for this disability of mine, and, while there is inherent unfairness to that, I would rather it be me than anyone else. I was born disabled. So I was eighteen when I was put on disability. The day I received my first cheque, I turned to my mother and said, "Okay, so how do I get off it?" and she said, "Honey, don't ever ask them that. You work hard and do whatever you want to do, but for God's sake, don't ever tell them you want off it."

Sorry, Mom.

I want off. I want that to be possible more than the average enabled person wants to win the lottery. It’s about as likely, too.

Here's the thing about me. I do work hard, and, in a lot of ways, I do get to do whatever I want to do, more so than my mother and every doctor I've ever had has ever imagined I would. And “the system” is still in charge. Because ODSP has a rent cap, a maximum allowance for housing, I live in a small town I hate, with people who have known me since I was six years old, and still look at me from the limp up. A small town that has no public transportation, and no disability-centered recreation programs, and a miniscule amount of non-physical jobs on offer. Because ODSP has a maximum savings allowance, I cannot save for anything important, like a house, or my own education, and even if I did, all of my assets would be in files where ODSP could decide, not only how much I earned, but what I get to keep. Last year, I wanted to go to film school and couldn't, because in my position, I am unable to get a line of credit, and I’m not allowed to save that kind of money myself. They take a full 50% of everything I earn, and expect regular updates on how much I am earning, and if my paperwork is so much as a day late, they have a handy automatic process, and you just don't get paid til it comes in, and they can be bothered to send it to you.

I do well. I am pursuing post-secondary education. I was always able to do a lot with a little, so I have some fairly high credit cards. I have a decent part time job that I enjoy, and where I am only occasionally reminded I am not like other people. Whenever my savings does hit its maximum allowance, or I don't owe anything on credit cards, I do some travelling. I'm single, and so far my only dependents are my dogs. I live on my own. It's not a terrible life. The problem has never been that it is a terrible life. The problem has always been that it is not mine. That when I wanted a place to live, I had to go before a committee, and convince them that a group housing situation would not work for me. That when I wanted a job, I had to go through another committee, who then had to decide if I was ready and willing to work, on their terms, before I even spoke to a potential employer. And that before I approached the employer, someone else did, supposedly, on my behalf. I would like to have children someday. But right now, I don’t know if that will ever be possible. And apparently, I am one of the few who got it "right."  As I am told, condescendingly often, I am not like those other people on Disability, just as I am not like those other people who have disabilities (funny, that, isn’t it? Nobody ever sees the connection between those two things.) I am told, often by those same strangers who see me from the limp up, that I work hard, and I am smart, and I should be proud of what I’ve done. I should be proud. I should be allowed to be proud.

But I’m not. Because every once in a while, depending on the person, the circumstances, whatever, stuff comes out. I am asked why it is that I get to go to Europe while I am on Disability and should be receiving the minimum needed to keep me fed and clothed (yes, people do say that. Yes, they say it, in exactly that way, and right to my face. Yes, these are people I know.) If a friend or family member is struggling with their finances, and I offer sympathy, because I also struggle, the response is usually, “Yeah, I know. It sucks.” But sometimes, “Well, you’re lucky, at least you’re on Disability.” And even, if I don’t know the person very well, “Well, you should feel grateful you at least have Disability to fall back on.” On a few memorable occasions, when I have been ‘proud’ in front of the wrong people, I get, “Yeah, but it’s not really your money, is it?” And everytime that happens, I want to shake the living crap out of the person, I want to slap zir across the face and ask when the last time zie was told to feel grateful for the opportunity to ask for help from people who don’t actually want to give it, and need to make sure you understand that you have to be fairly pathetic to need it first. And you know what sucks? I don’t even have a body that would allow me to shake someone. My mother’s advice about not telling people how much I hate the system was not her first advice regarding ODSP. Her first advice was when we were applying, when she turned to me and said, “Don’t do what you do at the doctors office. Please don’t tell them you’re fine. I know it’s hard, but you have to tell them how bad it is, and you have to tell them everything, or they won’t want to help you.”

All of this is relevant. All of it makes me angry. All of it is important. But none of it is why I am angry today. So here’s what happened:

I am on ODSP with a part-time job, but as a full time student, I am exempt from losing 50% of my pay cheques to ODSP. However, they can apparently still cut me off if I don’t hand in my pay stubs on time. “On time” is part of the problem, since your pay stubs are always two months behind (ODSP comes at the end of every month, not the beginning, and I hand in the pay stubs for the previous month before that, but I have to hand them in before a certain date or my file is put on automatic hold. Understand? Me neither). Since February is a short month and I was two days away from getting paid on the due date, I was a couple days late with my pay stubs, and sent them in a week before cheques were due. I didn’t get paid on the day I should have, but I had expected it to be late, so that was fine. When my landlord called a week later, and asked why her ODSP cheque hadn’t come in, I told her I wasn’t sure, and called them. Where my worker told me I hadn’t handed in my pay. I reassured her I had. She checked again. “Oh! Here they are! I must have misfiled them!”
   “Really?” I said, “Because I dated them.”
   “Yeah I see that. They were late.”
   “Right, but they had the dates right on them.”
   “Yeah... You’ll get your cheque in a few days.” A few days. And this is halfway through the month.

But whatever. I have a job, I know my rent will be paid, my bills are caught up. Responsible with money, remember? Good at being broke. So I let it go. This month rolls around. I don’t get my cheque for this month. Which is odd, as I remember handing in my pay. I call.
   “I don’t have your pay at all for last month.” I sputter, for a second, in a panic.
   “Wait, how do you not- I handed in a lot last month, and two this month. You have all of them.”
   “Can you resend them?”
   “No. I always throw them out afterward, otherwise I get them all mixed up.”
   “Right. Um. Well. I don’t have them. I’m sure I don’t have them.”
   “Well you must.“ and I’m frantically trying to wrack my brain, trying to work out how I could have sent her the wrong pay stubs, what I may have done wrong, and she goes,
   “I’ll have another look.” and I say,
   “Thanks.” and hang up. Twenty minutes later, she calls back,
   “I found them.” She said, “you sent them early, so they were with the others.”
   “Right, because I always send them all at once.”
   “Right. Well, it’s all fine now, you’ll get your cheque by Monday.”
   “Okay.” She hangs up, and that’s it. No apologies, and that’s twice she’s tried to blame me for her mistakes. That’s twice I’ve almost blamed myself for her mistakes. Oh, but we’re not done yet.

Monday rolls around, and still no cheque. So I call ODSP, skip going through my worker, and go right to the head office, where I must have sounded pretty terrible. I don’t remember my exact words, but I do remember that I told her that because of my worker losing my paperwork, my cheque is late, and I was told it was to come in today, and it hasn’t, so when is it coming in? And I know it was bad, because for the first time in my life, the people in that office jumped. The person on the phone stammered that I should really talk to my worker, she would go find her. She left me waiting on the phone for about fifteen minutes then came back and said, “She’s on break, so I have no idea where she is, but I’ve looked at your file. It should be in later today, or tomorrow. If it’s not, please call us.” Which I assumed meant, because that would mean something is really wrong. So I said,
   “And if it’s not in by tomorrow, and I call you, what then?”
   “We’ll sort it out, okay? Don’t worry.” And because the secretary of the head office is usually not someone who deals directly with clients, (though apparently, neither does my worker, har har) I let her off the phone.

Still here? Still not done.

So, later on that day, my landlord calls to ask if I will be paying her myself this month. See, if I made too much money, before I started school, disability would halve my paycheque and there wouldn’t be enough left over to pay my landlord, which means they send the full amount directly to me. It really only happens during the holidays, since the rest of the year I work part time. But it does happen. Interestingly, if you’re a day behind sending in your pay stubs those letters telling you you’re cut off and may need to speak to a tribunal go out “automatically” but no one thinks to send you a letter that says, “Hey, so please make sure to have your rent money socked away because you’re getting a full cheque this month.” and they’re all very convinced that ODSP sending the cheque to your landlord is a surer thing than just doing it yourself. Because we all keep copious records of our income, but not one of us can manage writing a post-dated cheque. So I explain to my landlord that disability has lost my paperwork again but they swear up and down that they’ve found it, and cheques have gone out, and should be arriving any day now. My landlord’s response?
   “I don’t understand how they can just cut you off. If it’s their mistake, how can they just do that?”

Have to stop here for a sec, because that sentence, right there, is a large part of the problem, and I hear it all the time. My sister called me up one day to ask me how much disability raises your cheque if you have a baby, because her friend is pregnant and on disability. At the time, it was $200, and now it’s nothing. (There are apparently good reasons why it’s nothing, but I don’t have kids, and if I have to read any more of this nonsense than necessary, I may headdesk hard enough to cause another hemorrhage. Who knows where I’d be then?) So I told my sister what the maximum rent allowance was and she said, “but that’s ridiculous. She needs a two bedroom apartment.” and I said, “They don’t care. That’s what it is.” and she said, “But that doesn’t make any sense. That’s not fair.” At which point I took three deep breaths, counted backwards from ten in my head, and said, very slowly, “No. No, it’s not.”

It’s not fair.

Disability is not fair. It’s not fair to us, anyway. It wasn’t designed for us. It was designed so that the people who are not disabled are able to feel good about paying money they don’t really want to pay to people who need it, and may or may not deserve it depending on your personal feelings. Because disability is nobody’s fault, but, like I said, somebody has to be responsible for it. It was designed because it’s cheaper to pay us to stay below the poverty line than it is to build a society where we can be responsible for ourselves. It was designed for you, the enabled, and, like my landlord, like my sister, like my boss, you believe it works, because my life doesn’t suck. You believe it works because I work hard to make it look good, because I am grateful, I do know how lucky I am, not in the way you think of it, but because I am one of the people who are able to work, able to live without attendant care, and who never bought into or was forcefed all the socialization that makes us ultra passive dolls who are just happy to “contribute to society.” You tell yourselves “at least it’s not welfare” (which is a whole lot of problems in and of itself) and mostly, you think it works because you don’t understand how it works.

Back to my landlord. Because the next words out of her mouth are, “Is she going to increase your rent this month?” My landlord upped my rent three months ago. I was instructed to send in a letter to ODSP from my landlord, which I did, and they would increase the cheque they send to her. Since I don’t pay my landlord, I had no idea she wasn’t getting the right amount. So I apologized. I reassured her I did send the letter. She tells me,
   “Yeah, I know. I called, she said she’d got it and she’d take care of it, but she never did.”
   “I’m really sorry,” I say. “Honestly, this worker I’ve got is really unreliable. I did some screaming. I’ll deal with it.” My landlord laughs, and apologizes for adding to my stresses, and we hang up.

So. That’s my Monday. Now, before anyone starts on me, this is not isolated, or rare. My cousin is also on disability, and has similar problems; missing paperwork, not getting a full cheque when she is eligible, and a worker who is constantly out of the office, sometimes for weeks at a time. A friend of mine is constantly fighting her brother’s battles for him, because there is a constant fight over what he deserves, and who should be responsible for it. This is what you’re asking us to be grateful for.

Go back through my story, and think. Think about how lucky I really am, before you remind me to think of it for you. Think about how I’m lucky enough to need no physical therapy, or assistive devices, that require maintenance I’d have to pay for, and/or wait for. Think about how I have a job, so a cheque a few days late won’t impact me much. Think about how my landlord is okay with waiting. Think about how “hard I work.” How I’m one of the few who is, because she is able to, doing Disability the “right’ way, and the impact it might have on how people see me.

Then think about how my worker hasn’t apologized. Think about how my landlord doesn’t understand ‘how they can just do that.’ Think about how quick I was to blame myself, I, who have never bought into the socialization, because I am not like the others.

Then take five minutes, and think about the others.

In 2003 I was receiving As in every class in a course that admitted only 75 students a year. So the Registrar was surprised enough to ask, when I dropped everything. I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell her about months of being passed back and forth between program head and disability office, of “this is not my area” and “I’m not sure what you want me to do.” until finally, they gave me a choice. Stay, and pay, to study, and learn, and never graduate, or go. And by then I was too shell-shocked and battle scarred to argue, and I just left. And when she asked, I could only mumble, “personal stuff.” Because I couldn’t tell her, I couldn’t face having to say I was like ‘the others’ after all. I was too ashamed. And I stayed ashamed, until last year, six weeks before starting school again, when I confessed my shame to a dear friend, confessed that what bothered me most was that I had been wrong. Everyone had told me this was impossible, I should have listened, but I was stubborn, I had fallen on my own sword, and then run like a coward. He said,

“Don’t you fucking dare.

These were the same people who told you you couldn’t learn to walk. The same people who said it would probably be better for everyone if you were in special ed in high school, even when you got straight As in public school. They told you you couldn’t live on your own. How the fuck were you to know when they’d get one right? If somebody should have done something, it wasn’t you.”

I am not ashamed now. I am angry. When I came home afterward everyone I had ever known was as stunned as I was, even the ones who thought I would never actually finish. They kept saying, “How could they just do that?” But “they” do it the way everyone else does. Because this system, as it is now, is designed for us to fail. It is built so that we’re comfortably on the losing side, and we are taught to be good sports about the whole thing. It is built so that everyone is “doing their best” but nobody has to do a whole lot. And everyone who manages to beat the system is meant to feel so grateful, so special and rare, that they never even think about the how and why things were different for them. We’re a political tactic so complete and complacent, we never come up in politics. People ask me why somebody as political as I am never votes, and I always say the same thing, “There’s nobody speaking for us.” I have had enough. Somebody get me a fucking megaphone.

If you have a story, tell it. If you don’t, post this everywhere. I’m done being ashamed, I haven’t got a whole lot of pride left. I don’t care. We don’t talk about this often enough. Too many people don’t know, don’t understand, might want to help if they did, and if they don’t, well, at least nobody could lie anymore about who was on the right side. This system is broken. It wasn’t made for us, it wasn’t made by us, so it shouldn’t be our responsibility. Like so many other things. But like so many other things, I am fucking tired of it going to someone else.

Pass it on.

We Interrupt Your Regular Scheduled Novelling...

Sorry I've been AWOL. Nano and Vampires have been keeping me hopping. This isn't a real post, I just wanted everyone I know to see something. My beloved Jenny, who is the sweetest thing in the world, was outraged today, which doesn't happen often. This is why:

You are about to get very angry.

I commented. You should too. Sounds like this poor woman needs some support. Possible when I have ten minutes of not-required writing time, I may rage about this later. For now, she says it a lot better than I ever could. I applaud her bravery. And that's not a word I throw around a lot, to be honest.

Back to the grindstone!

Positively Infinite

You'll remember, I have been meaning to write this for a while, but I wasn't sure how to start it. And then something happened. So. This is not a rage post. This is not a Hannah post. This is a post on positive thinking. (Rages and Hannah are a feature of that. You'll see.)

Every once in a while, my day-to-day and my politics collide in a way where I am forced to acknowledge that the world is not really full of shiny happy people who want to do good. Not to say I'm not aware of assholes, their existence in my life, or the fact that they have far more bearing on my life than I have on theirs, and how horribly I despair when I sit and think about that for too long. But what I mean to say is, every once in a while I am forced to acknowledge that in many ways, the world is full of shiny happy people who just want you to get out of their way and leave them alone, kthanx!

I am hopeless, in the figurative sense. I have the worst luck, the worst timing, I am hopelessly clumsy, and I rehash the million ways any undertaking will go wrong. Weirdly, though, I am also painfully optimistic. I am a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other kind of gal (hence the blog name) where the bad stuff goes down, and then you wake up the next morning, and more stuff happens. And always, always, I believe the answer is right around the next corner, even when I'm so far gone I don't even remember what the question was. I mean really, sick, stupid, masochistic, Michael J. Fox levels of optimism*. It's hardwired into me, where, despite neurosis born of years of the aforementioned crap, be it long drawn out recovery after surgery, the hellish nightmare of The College Thing, and the years of aftermath, despite all the random WTFery of stuff that could only happen to me, from bad-idea surgeries to a good decision two days too late, I remain always waiting for my next moment. It is both a gift and a curse. I keep getting hurt, purely because I don't believe it could possibly happen this time. I keep going because what else am I going to do? Because if anything can happen, it could happen to me, right?

I don't see myself as an activist. I am an optimist. I am a hopeful person, and I believe the world is generally decent, and if I talk enough, someone will get this someday. But the trouble is, a lot of people think, because I am a woman who fights, and therefore, feminist purely by default, because I am a person who wants the world to change, that I am unhappy, that I am negative. Some of this is purely sexism, but sometimes, it is genuine concern and fear of the ignorant. So let me please explain, to the friends and family who aren't as familiar with this idea as the feminists and anti-ablists I know. For those of you just learning this, I know you're not going to get it, and I'm going to get arguments, but here goes anyway.


Complacency is not happiness.

I am complacent about my disability. It is something I have to deal with. It is something that colours my decision making, though less than what most people think it does, still enough that it requires a cursory nod every time I make a plan. It is something that changes what I am capable of, and how I handle what I am not capable of. It does not make me happy. It has its good points, and there are things I am that I know come directly or indirectly from being a person with a disability, and some of those things are good things. It is not something I dwell on or waste time giving more credit than it is due, but it is still, by and large, one of the negative forces in my life. I am okay with it. We are not always friends, me and this label of mine, but we peacefully acknowledge each other's existence, and I make allowances and work around it. I did not cultivate and grow this disability. It does not give me a sense of pride or strength the way you might imagine that it does. It does not bring me joy or happiness. Just a different perspective, which I am sometimes grateful for. I am mostly okay with having a disability, and mostly, I do not think it sucks all the time. That is complacency. I am also complacent, sometimes, about my sexuality. I know there is nothing I can do about it. I know there are things in this wide world that I will never experience, or at the very least, never in the way that the rest of the world insists they experience things. I know, sometimes, that I am lonely, and that I cannot express that loneliness without people misunderstanding me. I know that I am different in some fundamental way to the rest of the world, that judgments are made on both sides, and sometimes I am at fault, and sometimes others are at fault. But I still like being asexual. I know I am often happy when I am alone. I am happy not to have to sacrifice my wants for someone else's. I am horrified when I see the emphasis placed on beauty and standards, and relieved that I have no such motivation, and don't cave to the pressures. I'm happy to be in the company of people like J. M. Barrie and Michael Jackson, who were brilliant at what they did in a way I can only dream, and seemed like decent human beings. (Someone told me Salvador Dali was too, but I've never been able to verify.) And I am also comforted that they faced similar accusations and judgments. I'm confident that my asexuality has not damaged me in any way, but the prejudice and peer pressure I have faced because of it certainly have. So the sexuality isn't necessarily a negative force in my life, but I'm not sure it's a positive one either. It just is what it is. I am comfortable with it.

My writing makes me happy. My spirituality make me happy. They are positive, driving forces which challenge and excite me and push me to change: who I am, how I think, what I want, and what I am willing to do to get it, and how much I am willing to let people in. Change is not a negative thing. Change is movement, movement is energy, and energy is used for the good of things. Sometimes, writing is hard. Sometimes, I can't get the words out right, or I can't get the words out at all, or there isn't enough story, and it dies off, or there's a question I haven't asked, a perspective I haven't considered, and everything hinges on this empty hole that I can't seem to spot, let alone fill. It's hard. But it is mine, writing, even though I do believe I was born with it, it is still mine, and when I get it right, I can take pride, not in having worked around a problem, but in having created something which changed, with the writing, which became something outside of what I know and what I think, and I can enjoy that and know that I have changed because of it. Sometimes, my chosen spiritual paths frighten me. Sometimes I am unsure. Sometimes I am weak or believe myself to be weak. But I know in my heart that I am learning. I know I've chosen right, for myself, and that I appreciate the learning, and that it changes me. And it makes me happy, and powerful, to be the force of my own change, to bear witness to my own growth, and to be more awake in the world the more I change. I have more value outside of myself, the happier I am. Pride and accomplishment, growth and change, and discovery and education changes you. And when you change and are happy, you pass on positive energy. Change is good.

Two stories. The first is what happened to kick my butt into writing this thing in the first place. I had a house guest, someone who knows me quite well, and has known me for years. We got to talking about a certain actor, and I mentioned that I was angry because he had played a blind person in a film I saw. My friend shook her head, and said she didn't understand why things like that bothered me, so I explained that of course it bothered me, blind people don't have the opportunities to play sighted. People who use wheelchairs don't get to play people who can walk. And on and on and on. So then she placates me with "Yeah, but _________ is famous, and they needed someone famous." This is a common argument which makes zero sense, and I said, "And why are there no famous blind actors again? Oh, right, because they don't get hired." (Incidentally, my favorite WTF excuse is the one that goes, 'well, we can't be sure that person can do everything the character needs to do.' Uh, writers? That means the character is badly written! That means you're being unrealistic!) So then she backpedals.

"Okay," she says, "I know. I know it's wrong and it's bad, but it's just how things are. It's not going to change. I don't understand why you let yourself get so upset about it."

Take a moment to think about that. Why would I, who have aspirations to write screenplays one day, and would like to write realistic portrayals of people with disabilities, get upset that if I do that, I will likely be the only person who has a disability working on said movie? The only person with any knowledge of my own intended audience, and a pretty unimportant person even so. I know, I'm so sensitive, aren't I?

When people say, "Why do you get so upset about...", what they really mean is, "Why do you expect people to care about..." Sometimes, people is a politically correct "me", as in, "Why should you make me care about things I don't want to. How dare you!" Sometimes, it's a more passive "me", as in, "I already know nothing I do will ever affect anything. I don't have to care about this because it won't matter if I do or not." Which, really, is a lot more negative than insisting on change. (Sometimes it's also, "I actually think you're totally wrong, and I don't want to tell you, so I'll just placate you until this goes away," but I'm not giving that one any credence here because in this instance, it's just flat out wrong. Like, one of those rare and beautiful black and white versions of wrong, where one side is right, and the other is nowhere near where right is.)

People think caring about things, being passionate about social justice, as I am, makes me negative, because I am constantly examining my own behavior, and educating others about theirs, when I can. People think finding fault with large chunks of 'how the world works' makes me perpetually nasty and bitter and angry. Certainly, a large amount of things in the world make me angry, as a woman, a person with a disability, an asexual, a pagan. Certainly, I am frustrated (not bitter, just not happy) that there are less ways the world works for me than for others. But. I am an optimist first. Passion is a good thing. I do not use this fire or frustration inside me to hurt the people I love. I do not use it to hurt other people in similar situations, furthering my own cause, and setting others back. I use it to speak. I use it to write. Blog posts and stories both, to show people that I am part of the real world. That there is a world that exists, within "the world". Where holes still need to be filled in some places, and in others, space needs to be made. Where there is a need for a different kind of "normal", a new version of "acceptable". Being an activist isn't about pointing out the flaws in the system. That's just the first part. The rest is about fixing them. You can't be an activist, without being an optimist. You cannot work every day towards change you don't believe is coming. You cannot live a happy life, believing your perspective is invalid, and just existing is enough to hope for. I am learning one of the most fundamental beliefs belonging to many Pagan groups is that life itself gives you power, and you use that power, ideally, to make the world a better place. I exist, and in recognition and gratitude of the fact that I exist, in this world full of amazing things, to my own mind, I am honor-bound to do good in it. If that means certain things must change, then certain things must change, and I must do my best to see that change. Less than a generation ago, I would have been put in an institution, and see my family on weekends if I was lucky, and never be educated. In some parts of the world, a child like me would be put in a cage, fed just enough, and never talked to or stimulated. That changed, here. Here, now, someone fought for our right to be treated as people. That I am grateful and happy and proud of that change, however it came about, does not mean we're done. And I would certainly feel like an ungrateful little brat, for resting on someone else's laurels, and saying, "Okay, we have enough now." Because I want to be there when they start treating us like people who matter. Somebody could make things better, and it's not conceit to think it might be me, it's self-preservation. I don't do this to prove to you that my life is hard, or that people don't play fair. I do this to remind you it doesn't have to be this way. We are capable of more and better, as we have been through history. That you don't believe it, well. Just shows who's the negative one, doesn't it?

The other story: When I was a kid, I saw Peter Pan. Then I read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Then I heard David Copperfield and Oliver Twist. And I began to wonder what went into the water in London, and decided I must go there and see for myself. At around ten years old, I said to my mother, "One day, I am going to live in London, England," and she said, "Okay." And after the disastrous College Thing happened, and after I had woken myself out of my shell shock, I said, "Now. I am going to London now." And I did. I got a passport and what was left of my student loan, and I went to London, for a week. I had a ball, fell in love with the city, and came home, and warned my mother, "Next time I go, it's permanent," and began to plan. It took two years of working part time and living like a monk and carefully planning, and arguing with my mother/sister/therapist/various people that I was serious, and getting my visa, and a mix up with my passport, before getting the go-ahead. Along the way, the biggest snag I hit was that the people who said, "Oh, sure," when I was ten or fifteen had a lot more to say when I was twenty-four. Much of it along the lines of, "It's well and good to have dreams, but you need to have a real life, and be serious. This isn't going to happen. People don't just do this. Get a job, settle in, focus on building your life." And for the first time, it wasn't, "you can't do this." It was, "I can't do this, so how could you?"

It wasn't permanent. I had a two year visa, and I lasted three months. Couldn't find work. But it was three months. Three months living in London. And for the first time in my life, I had done something important, not to someone else, but to me. I had done something that wasn't amazing because I had done it, but because it had been done. I am going back in the summer, for a week and a half. Because I can. Because I am careful with money, and more importantly, because it is something I knew all along I would have. You can't have one without the other. Belief doesn't mean you can sit back and things will come to you, and there's no point in working for something you don't believe you're ever going to have, because even if, by some strange twist of fate, you get what you want, you'll waste it. I advocate for change because change is coming, and I want to make sure it's change I need to see, to keep going, to keep making gains in my life and the world, for myself when I need to, for others when I can. I may not make a difference, but I gain another drop of power each time I open my mouth when someone wants me to keep quiet. And that means something to me, whether it means anything to anyone else.

I have been in writing classes where I was the only person not writing a tragedy or drama. I have been in writing classes where, if I was not writing a tragedy or drama, I was mocked. If I wrote a happy ending, it was seen as 'taking the easy way out.' I don't know where we got this idea that being unhappy meant something more than being happy, but next to The Dreaded Mary Sue, it is my least-favorite myth about writing, and art in general. I hate the glorification of Misery and Dissatisfaction almost as much as I hate the glorification of Home and Family. I suffered, for much of my formative years, from what was quite literally a crippling form of depression and social anxiety, from the time I was eleven. It was so bad, I quite honestly saw my CP as the more manageable of the two conditions. When I woke up, went on meds and into therapy at the age of seventeen, my mother stared at me, after two weeks in treatment, and said, "Where have you been?" And that was enough to keep going. I'm off meds now, but still in counseling. My happiness is hard fought and hard won, and I will not let anyone tell me it means less or is less real, just because we suffer from a peculiar sense of ourselves, where we imagine that our lives aren't supposed to be really great and we should settle for "not lousy" whenever we manage to find it. I have had a life that is not lousy. It's not enough.

When I went to London, the common question, for some reason, was not "How?" but "Why?" and my answer was, "I want to, and I can." It's as simple as that. If you're able, do it. If you're not able, find a way. If there's no way, find another way. Again, I realize I'm luckier than most. I have a nice part time job I really like, I have goals, and, as I am not hindered by many visible signs of disability, I am, sometimes, afforded more humanity than others I know. But then again, I have able-bodied friends with full time jobs who were able to get their education, and who have dreams that go unfulfilled because those dreams are for other people. I have this theory that, since I am a person with a disability, I was spared all the awful socialization that taught us that there are Things which constitute a Real Life (since it was never expected that I would have any of them anyway.) so now, I go around foolishly believing that a Real Life is what I am doing, as I am living. This is why it's so important to me that people understand that a person with a disability does not want to be treated like an "ordinary" person. Because one thing I've learned is that "ordinary people" the way that you mean it, with Jobs and Spouses and Responsibilities, can be really really unhappy. They feel ripped off, because they were told what would make them happy, and they went out and did that, and it didn't make them happy, and now what? Who wants that? I am complacent as a person with a disability, but as a person with a life, it's pretty decent, and I'm pretty happy. I'm not flat broke anymore, I belong to a group of people who listen when I talk, I tell stories about people I will never be, when I have the time and energy, I have two precious furbabies who love me. Sometimes I do cool stuff like go to Europe in the summer, or set about self-publishing a book. Those things are possible, and for the things that aren't? Yeah, that hurts. That really sucks, actually, but there's always another direction to move in. I'm not stupid, I'm not naive, and I'm not trying to be completely unaware of whatever narrow grasp of privilege I have. It's not the life I wanted at ten, it's not the life I want at twenty-five, but I'm getting there. And I will get there, at thirty, forty, or fifty, maybe, but I will. And because I know that, I can share my happiness. I can spare a drop or two of my energy telling the people in my life that if things were different, I might be capable of more, if things were different, the fact that I am capable of anything would not be such a shock. I can spare my time and energy to tell people that one day, things will be different, things will be easier, for me, and others like me, and still, we will keep working, and moving forward. Because it's not about what is or what should be. It's about what is possible. And the answer to that is always, always anything.

People spend a lot of time telling me the things I should be grateful for, because they are grateful they are not me, or they are grateful they do not have to deal with anything worse than me. The truth is, I am more grateful than I could ever appropriately express. That doesn't mean I don't deserve more. There, I think, is the crux of the matter. There's a certain level of narcissism in advocating for change, in your own life, or the world at large. There is a point at which you demand it be acknowledged that you're important, and because of that, you are owed, in that you have the right to expect the amount of effort you put into something should match the value of the result. And I have reached that point, and the people who haven't are angry because how could I possibly think I should have more than they should?

One day, I will have more, and because I do, someone will start where I finish, and have more than that. I believe it is important that that happens, and I believe that it will not happen unless I make it happen, and certainly, it will not happen in a vacuum. So I do what I can every day, paying in advance, fighting for a better life for me, and a better world for everyone else, for the same reason I fought to go to London, and the same reason I fight for this book, now. Because it's important and it will make things better, and it will make me happy. But mostly because I want to. And I can. That should be enough reason for anything.

So. I do wholeheartedly apologize to the people who feel I am negative. Clearly, nobody has convinced you what you're worth, and you have no idea what the world is capable of. My condolences to you, and the people who have to put up with you, while you are putting up with life.


*Read it. I'm not kidding. One day, my little optimist heart tells me I will be given the opportunity to thank that man, for his awesome work, his awesome writing, and his general all-round awesome. I even forgive him for converting to American, because he is made of that much awesome. In case this is that chance, thank you sir, you are appreciated.