they call me byecurious yhe way im always a little interested in leaving👋

part of why i recognize little to no difference between so-called "recreational" vs "medical" drug use is because i recognize stress as a medical issue. mind-body dualism has us all convinced that stress is an ephemeral emotion that doesn't affect our bodies, but like daily stress, particularly if you're also disabled in some way, just Will Kill You. it can destroy your organs, overclock your brain, weaken your immune system... the effects of prolonged and consistent stress are underresearched (because then we'd have to question how we allocate labor. lmao), but they're there. if you use weed every day for no reason other than you need to force yourself to relax chemically so you can have fun and take your mind off stress, that is indistinguishable from medical use to me, having discarded mind-body dualism.

ughhhh i want to chew gum but i cant because moving my mouth for so long makes my tongue and jaw hurt. it really is the little things.

Listen guys, you don't need to look nice to go outside. Your health is more important than appearances.

I just went on a walk in my pajamas, greasy hair in a shitty bun, acne, and a pair of new balance sneakers. Cars passed by and I said hi to everyone who passed. Did I feel self-conscious? Of course, but it was worth it.

Now I feel a lot better, because I didn't A. Overextend by forcing myself to shower/get dressed/put on concealer beforehand or B. Avoid doing anything because I felt like a mess.

Go outside and be however you are. It's not your job to look good to random strangers, you deserve to go outside.

Ooch, eech, ouch, and other such expletives

sometimes, when someone is criticizing the stay-at-home-wife movement being sold to young women by conservatives, it loses focus on the "selling you a repressive and authoritarian worldview" point and slides into... well... implicitly leaving disabled people to die.

and what i mean by that is, it's all well and good to say you should do everything in your power to make sure you're not financially dependent on another person... but what if "everything in your power" is "nothing?"

what if how society is structured means you have absolutely no choice but to be financially dependent on another person? what if it's that, or simply die? this is the choice disabled people are faced with. not even uncommonly... frequently. people who need full-time carers, or who have very expensive medication and assistive tech needs, or people who simply can't work in the current job structure, often have the choice of... well... find someone to be financially dependent on, or face a slow, painful death, usually without housing. even if you're lucky enough to get on a fixed income, it's never enough to even make monthly rent, and that's not counting the extra costs of food, toiletries, medicine...

in fact, a lot of disabled people (certainly notably women, but absolutely not limited to, and in fact i see this happen to trans men over and over again, and i've lost a dear transmasc friend because of this) are funneled into being stay-at-home parents and homemakers, forced to do all of the domestic labor and childcare in exchange for a roof over their head and access to their medications/assistive tech, and isolated in all the same ways tradwives are isolated. in fact, this even happens with leftist partners/parents. all the time, i see disabled people disappear from public life entirely, lose contact with all their friends, and consign themselves to a life of cleaning up after someone while struggling to handle their own health needs, even having their disabilities exacerbated and their lifespans shortened by the amount of domestic labor they're required to do.

but it isn't a choice... it can't be fixed by focusing on academia or work... and it's not due to buying into conservative propaganda. all i ask is, please remember this, and please never leave us out of these discussions.

disabled/chronically ill people in general do not have the same number of usable hours as ableds. i can't meet my friend tomorrow because i need to wash my hair, and i can't meet them the day after because i need to do a load of laundry. i can't meet them thursday because i have an important appointment on friday, and if i overdo it on thursday i'll have to cancel friday's appointment. then i can't meet them on saturday because i'll be recovering from going out on friday, if i even manage to make it out the house. the old 'we all have the same 24 hours in the day' saying does not apply to us.

it's weird that now that i'm finally having my health issues addressed, i'm afraid. i think i've been so comfortable in my pain. it's weird. it's not that i don't want to get better, i do, but the idea that i'm being listened to and taken seriously is daunting. the idea that i might have actual diagnoses—actual names to my issues—is scary. it makes me feel like, now that i'm being listened to, i was faking it the whole time. like this has all been one big ploy and i'm going to get busted now. i don't know why i feel like this. who would i be faking? why would i be faking it to myself?

it's scary to actually start prioritizing my health after years of complete disregard from doctors and getting so used to being... sick that it's no longer a concern.

One reason I still struggle so much with saying no to things, for the sake of my disability, is because there’s still so much uncertainty.

You ask me to go do something, and I say no, I can’t do that right now. But I still hesitate. I still feel so bad, and so guilty, because the truth is, I don’t know for sure I can’t do it. You’ve asked me what seems to be a simple question, but I’m here having an intense internal debate and battle with myself.

Because the real answer is that I just don’t know. Maybe I can do this thing. Maybe I’ll feel fine afterwards, or at least mostly okay. It sounds fun, and I’d like to, and maybe it would be worth it. But also maybe it would make me feel terrible. Maybe it will affect me in such a way that I can’t do this other thing I really need to do tomorrow. Maybe it wouldn’t be worth it at all.

But there’s no way for me to know for sure.

The thing about becoming disabled is that it touches every part of your life—which means it changes every part of your life.

Your own self image will likely be completely broken down. You are not who you thought you were, and your life will not be what you thought it would be. It’s up to you to decide how you want to rebuild yourself. It’s up to you to figure out how to even begin to do that.

Likewise, the way you see the world around you will change. You start viewing everything through a different lens. You have to decide how to interpret what you see, and what you do about it.

You learn which parts of you are intrinsic, unchangeable. In some ways, you become a new person. You learn things about yourself and about the world around you that other people might never have to learn.

God, most days I can take it. I can swallow the pain and grit my teeth through the nausea and smile through the aching. I can find ways to convince myself that this life of mine is good good good. But some days I wake up after a night of not sleeping and I cry into my hard boiled eggs. Some days the pain in my shoulder means the world is going to end and the stiffness in my back heralds a sinkhole that swallows me whole. Some days I can’t take the fact that I’m still sitting in this house while everyone else keeps moving moving moving.

Some days it all comes crashing down, and I wonder if I was ever able to withstand it at all.

Accursed indeed

Are you chronically ill and exhausted? Have you been a little flare-up-y recently? Do you have things to do today? Well if so, may I interest you in an

Accursed Disability Nap!

faqs about the nap:

will it be comfortable?

no.

how long will it be?

extremely. probably like 4 hours in the middle of the day.

will I wake up several times and have just enough awareness to be able to mentally pummel myself about the fact that I'm not doing anything but not enough awareness to physically move any of my limbs?

haha yeah that's the best part

okay, but will I be rested at the end?

you will not <3

What are some chronic illnesses that can only occur in a fantasy setting?

there is no unlived life or alternative reality where everything went right…. there is only here and now what are you going to do with it

Well, I’m getting over my special temporary symptoms, which means it’s time for my regularly scheduled chronic symptoms to reclaim the spotlight with a vengeance.

“If a society puts half its children into short skirts and warns them not to move in ways that reveal their panties, while putting the other half into jeans and overalls and encouraging them to climb trees, play ball, and participate in other vigorous outdoor games; if later, during adolescence, the children who have been wearing trousers are urged to “eat like growing boys,” while the children in skirts are warned to watch their weight and not get fat; if the half in jeans runs around in sneakers or boots, while the half in skirts totters about on spike heels, then these two groups of people will be biologically as well as socially different. Their muscles will be different, as will their reflexes, posture, arms, legs and feet, hand-eye coordination, and so on. Similarly, people who spend eight hours a day in an office working at a typewriter or a visual display terminal will be biologically different from those who work on construction jobs. There is no way to sort the biological and social components that produce these differences. We cannot sort nature from nurture when we confront group differences in societies in which people from different races, classes, and sexes do not have equal access to resources and power, and therefore live in different environments. Sex-typed generalizations, such as that men are heavier, taller, or stronger than women, obscure the diversity among women and among men and the extensive overlaps between them… Most women and men fall within the same range of heights, weights, and strengths, three variables that depend a great deal on how we have grown up and live. We all know that first-generation Americans, on average, are taller than their immigrant parents and that men who do physical labor, on average, are stronger than male college professors. But we forget to look for the obvious reasons for differences when confronted with assertions like ‘Men are stronger than women.’ We should be asking: ‘Which men?’ and ‘What do they do?’ There may be biologically based average differences between women and men, but these are interwoven with a host of social differences from which we cannot disentangle them.”

— Ruth Hubbard, “The Political Nature of ‘Human Nature’“ (via gothhabiba)

Yes.

how come there are so many posts these days that are like "You have to grow as a person and get over [trait that has to do with a disability/mental illness]. You see, it's important to function in life. I have Disability/Mental Illness, and i successfully Improved Myself, so don't say you can't do it."

Now typically, the whole point of a disability or mental illness is that it is something that has not responded to a simple individual effort to Get Better with no further strategy, information, or catalyst except simply Wanting To Get Better.

But let's say we are in an imaginary world where individual effort and willpower alone are enough to solve any problem, the necessity of tools, knowledge, or interpersonal support be damned. Who are you to imagine you can help someone's personal journey happen faster by making a snippy post? Have you never experienced being stubborn and resistant to advice because you were not ready to see that it was good advice? It is useless to tell someone who feels that their problem is unsolvable, that they need to simply solve their problem. And it is worse than useless to defend yourself from accusation of being callous by saying that you solved your problem by simply trying to solve it, so everyone should stop feeling that their problem is unsolvable.