I'm disabled, and I want more. For myself, right now. I kind of want All The Things, really, in the way a lot of Americans do, but only a few really get to pull off, and the ones that do? Don't look like me.
I know a better politics takes time, but it feels like I've been waiting(and working, in addition to "wishin' and hoping' as the old song says) Even as I write this right now, I feel pressure from within to do the expected good disabled person thing and take a quick note of my blessings: How fortunate I am that aside from the Big Kahuna that gave me the impetus to write a disability-writer blog(glass half-full says "as well as wrenching the time to compose from wage slavery") most of my health situations are *complaints* not agonies and that I have a supportive family that doesn't mind if I give from evenings and weekends to nag strangers. But gratitude is far less spiritual when it feels both compulsory and like I have lived out an exceptionally cloying and non-erotogenic stereotype by living up to it. Especially when I'm not that good at doing it.
A lot of disabled people don't get to be fifty. Which is heavy, just on its face, but also puts me in this weird space, where if I wanted to accept it, I could be an Elder Stateswoman and shit...scare the criplings about life before even dial-up--they'll also never know what a revelation it was either, back when a crip on a prom-court ballot was "so mean," and not a "so sweet" viral ticket to talk to Kelly Clarkson or somebody.(Sadly, probably the one thing that doesn't shift that much? Disabled people's chances of...getting anything at the end of that night.) But I don't feel like a wise elder; maybe nobody does. I interviewed a 94-year-old volunteer for a legislative district newsletter once who wasn't all that into playing oracle for the rest of us. Though it made her a really tough interview, I could respect that. And I'm really not ready for the Bernie Sanders "plant trees you'll never sit under" trip right now. At least not full-time.
A lot of my abled friends are downsizing and downshifting from stuff right now(Not to make them sound like they live in a Sunday supplement) but I'm not really there, either. Though I clear out from time to time--kind of a losing battle, since "Add To Cart" is a lot easier than creating a life that feels exciting, and I'm keenly aware that if *my* life, borrowed as it feels, calmed down any more, it wouldn't be simplifying, but more like something in suspended animation.
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