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Sep. 8th, 2008 03:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nilchanceFrom September 8th to the 14th is Invisible Illness Awareness Week. I'm going to try to blog daily on the topic of invisible disability, but ironically my fibromyalgia is flaring up, so we'll see what I can do.
I used to be that asshole in the parking lot. I check for the handicapped tag when I pass those parking spots. I used to check not only that the parked cars had one, but that they "deserved" it. If you walked fine, if you didn't have a cane or a service dog or a wheelchair in the backseat, I used to judge the hell out of you. Sometimes I did it quietly. Sometimes it came with pointed remarks about "oh, they sure look disabled, don't they?"
Ahaha. Yeah. The goddess has a sense of humor.
For those of you who don't know, I work in a disability services office. My mom is disabled; she was diagnosed with MS when I was 2. I have fibromyalgia and chronic daily headache with a side of depression. And with all this dubious experience, let me just say: most people with disabilities don't look like it.
I should've known better. Mom didn't use a cane or a chair until I was 15; you couldn't tell that this short firecracker of a woman raged inside with bipolar disorder, that she had bruises under her clothes from injecting herself with a drug to suppress her immune system so it didn't eat her spinal cord, that she had holes in the gray matter of her brain. But it was easy to judge. Disability was the blind man with a white cane, the mentally retarded students my mom worked with, the wheelchair, the flurry of sign language.
Disability is "oh, but you look so good!" It's friends and relatives suggesting vitamins and prayer. It's professors telling you that you just can't hack it and you're wasting their time. It's working through chemotherapy for the health insurance, it's high divorce rates and doctors who police your painkiller usage. It's not that easy, is what I'm trying to say.
The other day, as T and I pulled into the library in a space beside (beside) the handicapped spots, there was a young couple staring at us. While I got out of the car, I heard the woman mutter, disgusted, "oh, they really look disabled."
It's not the body that's disabled. It's our culture, the one that lays out rules about who gets to be "really" disabled. It's the Jerry Lewis telethon that tells us to pity poor cripples and to pay out for a cure, rather than using the money to pay for ramps and health care. It's the myth of the welfare queen and the person bilking SSDI, the expectation that everyone is trying to pull one over, the lack of compassion for each other. That's a real disease, and it's not invisible. You can see it everywhere you go.
Especially in parking lots.
I used to be that asshole in the parking lot. I check for the handicapped tag when I pass those parking spots. I used to check not only that the parked cars had one, but that they "deserved" it. If you walked fine, if you didn't have a cane or a service dog or a wheelchair in the backseat, I used to judge the hell out of you. Sometimes I did it quietly. Sometimes it came with pointed remarks about "oh, they sure look disabled, don't they?"
Ahaha. Yeah. The goddess has a sense of humor.
For those of you who don't know, I work in a disability services office. My mom is disabled; she was diagnosed with MS when I was 2. I have fibromyalgia and chronic daily headache with a side of depression. And with all this dubious experience, let me just say: most people with disabilities don't look like it.
I should've known better. Mom didn't use a cane or a chair until I was 15; you couldn't tell that this short firecracker of a woman raged inside with bipolar disorder, that she had bruises under her clothes from injecting herself with a drug to suppress her immune system so it didn't eat her spinal cord, that she had holes in the gray matter of her brain. But it was easy to judge. Disability was the blind man with a white cane, the mentally retarded students my mom worked with, the wheelchair, the flurry of sign language.
Disability is "oh, but you look so good!" It's friends and relatives suggesting vitamins and prayer. It's professors telling you that you just can't hack it and you're wasting their time. It's working through chemotherapy for the health insurance, it's high divorce rates and doctors who police your painkiller usage. It's not that easy, is what I'm trying to say.
The other day, as T and I pulled into the library in a space beside (beside) the handicapped spots, there was a young couple staring at us. While I got out of the car, I heard the woman mutter, disgusted, "oh, they really look disabled."
It's not the body that's disabled. It's our culture, the one that lays out rules about who gets to be "really" disabled. It's the Jerry Lewis telethon that tells us to pity poor cripples and to pay out for a cure, rather than using the money to pay for ramps and health care. It's the myth of the welfare queen and the person bilking SSDI, the expectation that everyone is trying to pull one over, the lack of compassion for each other. That's a real disease, and it's not invisible. You can see it everywhere you go.
Especially in parking lots.
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no subject
Date: 2008-09-09 03:56 am (UTC)It's the people who don't understand that pills can't fix everything, that the drug side-effects can be worse than what they're treating, and act like it's some kind of personal failure of yours that you had to stop taking the meds.
It's the people who try to help, but refuse to understand that they're making things worse. Putting in a "fresh scent" chemical air freshener in your room, because the musty air must be causing your migraines. Dragging you out of your house during an attack of agoraphobia and leaving you even more drained and twitchy when they finally let you go back.
It always seems to come down to people.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-09 02:20 pm (UTC)That just made me shudder in sympathy. God, that's awful.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-10 06:19 am (UTC)