This blog turns one this week...

Happy birthday!
Still kind of feel like BC has not reached its best potential, but there aren't a lot of anniversaries in my life.  I am sticking to it better than in my last attempt, though.
Thanks for staying on this ride with me...no matter what your mobility level, nobody has to come in through the secret door in the back.

Weltschmertz...

a lot of the pain in my life that doesn't come from ableism comes from people not being who I thought they were.(it's happened before and will happen again, both because my corner of the world is pretty small, and because I think it's awfully late in the game to pretend I'm a rugged individualist)
This also means the typical advice of either a. physical exercise or2. focus on things you know you control...is not very useful. Unfortunately.

 Even if I were still more the questing type, self-help and spirituality books, despite their other flights of vision, such as thousands-year-old spirit guides and the like, tend to treat disability as the stitch in the rug that is dropped to show it's made by human hands...a sign of human frailty...a message from the universe that just says "Oops!" Which probably feels deep as hell if you haven't just spent twelve dollars (again) for a little perspective only to read that God, still, doesn't make junk or what-have-you.(if I fall for this again, it would be my fault, not theirs.)  Would love to see a crip get her life together enough to write a self-help book.  It is painfully clear that I will never be that person, however much I entertain myself with the thought of a Wire companion book and advice manual called, say "This Ain't Aruba, Bitch."

Anatomy of a Stereotype...

Even if I somehow wanted to live the disability stereotype(why would I? No real reason, except not having to be confounding every day…there might be a certain ease in being what people expect.) I couldn’t do it. 

Because I’d have to be weak yet determined, mature enough to work, yet childish enough to never want a tongue in my mouth.  Assertive(with everyone else but you) but also willing to dispense highly personal information with the sleek volubility of one of those recorded buttons at the museum. Not vain or immodest, but intensely comforted by having strangers examine me as one of life’s urban curiosities. The stereotype is friendly and secure, but still always looking for direction, excited by life, but willing to place its nose against the window glass and watch the real people, the able people, have the real fun and chances in life.Pity is a relationship, right? The stereotype tries to believe.

It is smart enough to maybe go to class with you, but pliant enough not to want to be the best at anything. It often aches, but doesn’t say anything so that you don’t offer it “special treatment” and it gets really psyched by the thought that if you take its picture from the shoulders up that “you can barely tell.”It is perfectly fine with its secret grotesque ugliness that both other people and it smile and dance around a lot. The stereotype has funny complaints, but it never really gets bothered. Maybe sometime one of the other stereotypes, Soccer Moms, or Security Dads, will take it to the polls, but the stereotype focuses on the tiny dot of its home and family and the moment When Everything Changed