currently thinking a lot about how much less disabled I'd probably be if the general attitude in society to people – INCLUDING CHILDREN!!!! CHILDREN ARE PEOPLE!!!! – struggling or being slow or avoiding tasks would be to accomodate them and be patient, rather than to be annoyed or punish them.
My earliest memories are of constantly getting chided for being slow. Sometimes it was good-naturedly, sometimes sternly, sometimes I was actually punished (slow at eating? not getting to eat my fill). At no single point did anyone wonder if I just needed more time than others and if this human variance, this diversity, might be tolerable. No, I had to be made to fit into the box, into the schedule. For no reason. Just 'cause.
Was I already disabled or chronically ill as a kindergarten-aged child? Was that why I was slower than others, despite trying? It's possible. I don't know how I'd ever find out.
But even without pathologising the way I have always been. I needed accommodations. And not getting them trained me to dissociate, to push myself past my limits on a daily basis as the default way to interact with anyone. It was fucking exhausting and everyone told me it wasn't. So I lost touch with my body's signals, distrusted them, actively faught them. A couple decades later my body is breaking down and no longer able to accommodate my rushing and pushing myself.
I could compensate as a child, as a teenager. I stopped being able to in my 20s. I could still be part of society by living off benefits instead of having to work. Now, a few days before my 40s birthday, I can't take proper care of myself and can't even dream of participating in society beyond mastodon (and even then it's spotty).
I deteriorated in a way that felt imperceptibly slow until it suddenly wasn't. And in hindsight, there was a steady progression.
At no point did anyone (except Dion) consider encouraging me to slow down. To listen to my body and its limits. No. They all just assumed I needed to try harder, or that I'd always be miserable and pityable.
It's not true though. I have turned the boat around, slowly. I am recovering now and am getting better. Slowly at first, I hope I will look back in a few decades and see as steady an incline from now on, as I had a decline before. Sure, I can't expect to be as spry as a 20yo when I'm 60, 70, 80. But I can be spry for my age. And I will get there by no longer trying so hard. By doing the actually hard work of allowing myself rest.
#disability #DisabilityPrideMonth #ChronicIllness #ableism #AbuseCulture #adultism #AutisticBurnout #burnout
