"Maybe They Just Boned, Adrian."

 

My continued search for meaning through exploring my diagnosis has slowed a bit. Probably a modern-day Thoreau would have some thoughts about quests undertaken via Facebook, but I'll spare you. What did I expect? Cheat codes?(Not exactly, but kind of, I think. Sigh...) Feels weird that I don’t have a faction in a Persistent Internet Argument but I don’t feel such overweening pride in my disabled identity that I wouldn’t switch it, but I don’t have loads of abled dreams, anymore. Only a few times since high school. It’s lonely not to have a side, in addition to not answering any deep-seated questions, even when I wasn't sure what I was really looking for, anyway.  Such a habit to be disappointed I don't have it, though.  When in doubt, play the hits! And, no, no rotation of new, instant internet besties, much less(heh, heh) a...lid...for my...um, pot.)

I suppose it’s not unusual that thinking about my life would make me remember a documentary, but instead of “Crip Camp” or something like that,I’m reminded of a moment in the Adrian Grenier documentary A Shot In The Dark. If you haven’t seen it, the actor/director drives across country, from maybe Brooklyn to New Mexico, to see the father that he never met. His friends are patient with his cosmic side, all of his musings about the confluence of factors that brought his parents together(Maybe more likely as an actor who won the appearance lottery) but it’s a long trip so his female  friend ends up rolling her eyes and saying “Maybe they just boned. Adrian.”

Maybe CP is just an accident,too.. I can't decide if that would make me sad or free me up.

I wish I didn't want to take the next decade or so and put it in a box labelled "Free To A Good Home"  .

Help Out A Friend of a Friend...

 Help Kay Fight Cancer

I get a lot of mutual-aid requests, but I consider my friend to be an unimpeachable source, so it's important to help with this one. Apparently, Kay was a hero to someone when they were desperate.(Isn't that an energy we need to feed now?) Someone like that deserves someone like that.(And a better health system, too, but I don't have that much Crip Magic.) 

Why do People Even WANT Pity?

 a question I know I've returned to frequently, especially as regarding the illness- fabulist topic.  I watched Scamanda this week, which I thought I'd already seen, because I confused her with the faker on-staff with "Grey's Anatomy"(Which I'm not exactly a fan of, but I watched the reruns over lunch one summer and enjoyed them enough to be a bit jealous of both that chance, but even more than the writer's room dream, which hasn't quite faded as much as  my childhood fantasy of coming back as a macaw.) But also, I'd love to have my life experience respected, instead of feeling like I'd better invent a seated version of stuff other girls get.(For me, it's mostly not been like that, but neither does the traffic part when I roll by, either.)

Maybe I'm kind of a bad person, I think, if not the same kind of bad person that gets vaguely aroused during "Killer Couples" because, though I do know that, for every one of these scammy gals, there are probably a thousand families struggling and white-knuckling and  losing out. Volunteer coordinators tearing their hair out(those that aren't waiting for it to grow back for other reasons-- because nobody thinks cancer patients are real anymore.(And I do care about that, I promise you, but part of me watches wondering why I don't "pull" as a charity case beyond an occasional spot in line. Are big *blue* eyes less emotional than brown? I would never, ever, do that, but I do wonder what I would do with a tenth of their chutzpah. Maybe I'd be truly happy right now. I was an audacious child, and spent class time fighting to be right as if I was on some game show "Who Wants To Be In The Middle Class?" perhaps, but I didn't exactly win, and at some point, people kind of took me aside and told me it was unbecoming.  which it probably was, but finding that out did a number on my confidence that I'm still trying to make up for.

What I think is that pity feels more like being spit on than a warm bath to luxuriate in.I wonder, "Am I bad at this?" Even though I'm not dying and my mother would slap the color out of my cheeks if I leaned in for the handouts the way these people seem to do. Sometimes I don't feel as connected and committed *to my real disabled life* as these women are to these scams.  Sometimes I think they won't get true justice until they get injured or truly sick...does that mean I think this is a punishment?  Sometimes.

Sometimes, when I sign my own paperwork for my permanent condition, I have the tiniest urge to look over my shoulder as if this isn't real.  (It may not be fatal, but it's WAY real. )