Dear Alice...#AliceIsLove

 

Dear Alice,
We are contemporaries, so you are not my ancestor. I’m a little older, in fact, starting on this crazy disability journey while you were just a determined gleam in someone’s eye. We talked online a few times but I’m never sure how much people remember about me when I do that.  It seems that possibly my name might not mean much, but that we’d have a reference in common and that you would say “Hey, how’s it going with (Vexing Disability Topic #12) that brought me into your feed, but, probably you’d remember it better than I am right now. What set you apart is that you would actually know *what* strand of bullshit an online acquaintance was actually trying to pull apart *right now* and it’s not fucking great;

(I wish I could have told you about that, too, but it’s too long a story to type for metaphor’s sake, though I am probably planning to post this. Suffice to say, from what I heard from your friends this morning, you probably would have been tickled about it.

Your feed gave me a glimpse of what disability community would feel like, and though it seems contrary to the spirit of today’s events, I’ll always be angry at Elon and, indeed, Nature Herself for taking that from me, since I have it so seldom, and in such tiny bites. My disability community fits together more like Italy, back when, or maybe even Yugoslavia, It makes me sad that I’ve never had an “Oh, my tribe at last,” crip story, but I’m too tired of trying to convince myself I have to try to make it sound  good for you, wherever you might be as  I write this, having cancelled my zoom registration to make room for your real friends instead of my fangirl-who-doesn’t-understand-the-assignment self.

 Maybe that’s why I like to hide behind characters when I write thoughts like this; I usually make them better and bolder than I am. They get to win and so far? I don’t. I get to live to tell the story, though, which, in deference to today’s occasion, I’m trying for the first time in ages to make a good thing instead of rather unfortunate—it would still be nice if the next chapter was a banger—either with or without(hopefully with!) an actual bang or two.  Right now, I don’t see anything…it reminds me of after college when I had “detail-oriented” on my resume and didn’t realize there was a typo in it—guess I can take “visionary” out of my bio, too, right?

I used to wonder if you had a secret, sometimes. Not that I pulled out the full-on “How does she do it?” trip on you like an old lady in a supermarket, but, sadly, thinking about you *has* made resenting those people just that little bit harder(which, okay, it’s always hard to give up the hobbies of a lifetime, but if I learn something, I’d survive.) Sometimes I thought it was as simple as “Greatest City” vs.  “Oh, I changed planes there once. Damn, it’s hot.” Or that I never got to be Erika in the way you got to be Alice—trust a writer to believe that bylines save past the point she should know otherwise, and, you know, I do have some clips.  But am I a phenom? Since I’m still Ms. Hannukah  a great deal of the time, I guess it’s safe to say “No,”, but if we arm-wrestled, I would absolutely win, which, given the competitive mess that is the United States, maybe ought to be more satisfying?
Still wish we could have been friends,

Erika J from Phoenix