the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

Fat people deserve mobility aids, too. No matter if it's connected to their fatness or not, because having a mobility issue that is connected to one's fatness won't change that they're still fat and still have the issue at hand. Fat people don't deserve to "tough it out" because fatness should be this divine punishment doled out to those who "deserve" it. Fat disabled people deserve to have the peace of mind that they can exist in whatever way is most comfortable and accessible to them

Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.

love when men cry about body hair bc "it's hygiene" and yet 15% of cis men leave the bathroom without washing their hands at all and an additional 35% only just wet their hands without using soap. that is nearly half of all men. that means statistically you have probably shaken hands with or been in direct contact with one of these people.

love when men say that women "only want money" when it turns out that even in equal-earning homes, women are actually adding caregiver burdens and housework from previous years, whereas men have been expanding leisure time and hobbies. in equal-earning households, men spend an average of 3.5 hours extra in leisure time per week, which is 182 hours per year - a little over a week of paid vacation time that the other partner does not receive. kinda sounds like he wants her money.

love that men have decided women are frail and weak and annoying when we scream in surprise but it turns out it's actually women who are more reliable in an emergency because men need to be convinced to actually take action and respond to the threat. like, actually, for-real: men experience such a strong sense of pride about their pre-supposed abilities that it gets them and their families killed. they are so used to dismissing women that it literally kills them.

love it. told my father this and he said there's lies, damned lies, and statistics. a year ago i tried to get him to evacuate the house during a flash flood. he ignored me and got injured. he has told me, laughing, that he never washes his hands. he has said in the last week that women are just happier when we're cooking or cleaning.

maybe i'm overly nostalgic. but it didn't used to feel so fucking bleak. it used to feel like at least a little shameful to consider women to be sheep. it just feels like the earth is round and we are still having conversations about it being flat - except these conversations are about the most obvious forms of patriarchy. like, we know about this stuff. we've known since well before the 50's.

recently andrew tate tried to justify cheating on his partner as being the "male prerogative." i don't know what the prerogative for the rest of us would be. just sitting at home, watching the slow erosion of our humanity.

i hate that bad backs aren't viewed as a disability. i hate that "Every back is a bad back" mentality. i hate minimizing back pain by encouraging people to "just take a tylenol". i hate that people who throw out their backs regularly are told to "just sleep it off" or even worse "just exercise, it loosens things up." i hate when people say "my mom has a bad back and she just powers through it."

let people with bad backs be disabled and talk about how much pain we are in, and how much of a disability living with a weak, broken, eroded, degenerative, or paralyzed spine is. let us talk about the horrors and dangers of spinal surgeries. listen to us when we talk about the limited options for pain management and how it is an absolute nightmare to get treated for back pain and receive medication that actually works.

having a bad back is a disability. being in back pain all the time is not trivial. having back pain so bad you can't sit or stand is serious. feeling shooting pain into your legs is a big deal. feeling like no matter how much you stretch or take medicine your back never seems to feel better is a genuine medical issue. listen to disabled people and stop dismissing our pain.

Disabled people should be allowed to travel in comfort just like everyone else. Idc if their wheelchair "takes up space" or if them using the airport transport service makes you jealous. Idc if you get mad bc they got to be seated first even though you paid a lot for your seat. I don't care if you think they are some TikTok influencer pretending to be disabled. I literally don't give a fuck. That person has a right to be there just as much as you do. Mind your own fucking business.

Don't forget us this disability awareness month!

i still can't believe the LA Times article/interview just. openly admits that the show intentionally, from the beginning, fully removed Gabe being abusive and overtly made him just a nosy loser. Percy's relationship with Gabe is so important to how he navigates the world and the themes of the series. Percy's first monster is in his own home. He uses wards against evil against his step-father and they work. He has overt PTSD that colors his interactions with Mr. D and is why he's so antagonistic towards him for like four books. It isn't until Percy is able to move past his trauma and how Mr. D reminds him of Gabe that he sees Mr. D for who he actually is and understand him and begin to empathize with him. Heck, even into HoO we see Percy having visceral reactions to implications of alcohol/drinking because of Gabe. Everything about Percy's home life colors him as a character. His trauma and PTSD informs his perspective and they explicitly removed his PTSD in the show.

They removed Percy's PTSD. They brush over his experiences as a neurodivergent/disabled kid after the first episode and turned Sally into an Autism Speaks mom. Why. On what planet was that a reasonable change to be made.

happy disability pride month to anyone who has a disability from a condition that “usually isn’t a disability”. happy disability pride month to people with disabilities that aren’t often understood by able-bodied people. happy disability pride month to people who don’t have any official diagnosis yet. happy disability to people whose “labs look completely fine”. wishing you peace this july.

this is a friendly little post to say: if you find that doing stretches for wrist/shoulders/back/whatever either 1) don't help or 2) seem to make your pain worse, then please stop doing the stretches. the answer here is not to keep doing them becuase if you push through the pain eventually it'll get better, right?

listen to me. listen. stretches never did anything for me and at age 25 i learned i had hEDS, which meant 1) most stretches would never help me 2) depending on the stretch, could hurt me, so please. if they aren't helping. please do not keep doing them hoping that they will "eventually" help.

look into whether or not you have a hypermobility disorder or EDS or smth, great resource here: www.ehlers-danlos.com

I love you, trans people with intellectual disabilities. You deserve to have the same opportunities as everybody else, and that's because you are a person. You deserve to be happy. Intellectually disabled trans people deserve the exact same respect, recognition, and love that (should be) afforded to everybody else.

Intellectually disabled trans people, you deserve to make your own decisions about your transness. You are allowed to want for transition or to change your name, clothes, hair, pronouns, or anything else. You deserve support and understanding. I hope you are able to receive that. You belong in this world as your true self. Your transness and your disability/disabilities are not bad things - they are good, and they are important.

Pixie give up . Autism people too angry refuse to stop say “going nonverbal” . refuse to listen … and Pixie just . Can not any more . Crying so much upset so much nobody care at all … just How very very different is to never be able speak … not AT ALL same as losing Mouth words sometimes .

pixie all done being talked over and ignored and yelled at and told go kill pixie self … pixie WISH could just stop exist …

pixie ALL DONE .

from now on . People who miss use actually nonverbal words, Pixie just BLOCK . not care If mean Pixie not welcome in autism community anymore , Pixie never been welcome by community pixie Never welcome by speaking autism people anyway .

is no safe place for Pixie . :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :(

Shifty Aches and Maladies collection!

you have to go to work so you can pay for your doctor, who is not taking your insurance right now, and if you say i can't afford the doctor's you are told - get a better job. it is very sad that you are unwell, yes, but maybe you should have thought about that before not having a better job.

(where is the better job? who is giving out these better jobs? you are sick, you are hurting - how the hell are you supposed to be well enough for this better job?)

but you go to the doctor because you had the nerve to be hurt or sick or whatever else. and they tell you that it is because you have anxiety. you try your best. you are a self-advocate. you've done the reading (which sometimes pisses them off worse, honestly). you say it is actually adding to my anxiety, it is effecting my quality of life. so they say that you are fat. they say that all young people have this happen to them, isn't it a medical marvel! they say that you should eat more vegetables. they say that you probably just need to lose a little more weight, and that you are faking it for attention.

(what attention could this doctor possibly give? what validation? that's their fucking job, isn't it?)

there is always a hypochondriac, right. someone always tells you about a hypochondriac. or someone who is unnecessarily aggressive during the worst days of their life. or someone looking "for a quick fix". or some idiot who wasn't educated about how to properly care for themselves who just abandons their treatment. and again, the hypochondriac, the overly-cautious hysteric. these people don't deserve to be treated like humans (right), and since you might be one of these people, you also don't get treated like a human. because those people can really fuck with the system, you now have to pay for it. and besides. you're actually probably faking it.

(more often than not, you find a 2:1 ratio of these stories. for every "hypochondriac", there are 2 people who knew something was wrong, and yet nobody could fucking find it. the story often ends with pointless suffering. the story often ends with and now it's too late, and it's going to kill me.)

you are actually just making excuses. someone else got that procedure or that diagnosis and he's fine, you should be fine too. someone else said they watched a documentary about other inspirational people with your exact same condition, maybe you should be inspirational, too. you're just too morbid. your pain and your experience is probably just not statistically concerning. it is all self-reported anyway, and you're just being a baby.

(once, while sitting down in the middle of making coffee, you had the sudden, horrible thought - i could kill myself to make the pain stop. you had to call your best friend after that. had to pet your dog. had to cry about it in the shower. you won't, but that moment - god, fuck. the pain just goes on and on.)

you know someone who went in for routine surgery and said i still feel everything. they told her to just relax. it took her kicking and screaming before they figured out she wasn't lying - the anesthetic drip hadn't been working. you know someone who went in for severe migraines who was told drink water and lose weight. you know someone who was actively bleeding out and throwing up in the ER and was told you're just having a bad period.

in the ER there are always these little posters saying things like "don't wait! get checked today!" and you think about how often you do wait. how often the days spool out. you once waited a full week before seeing the doctor for what you thought was a sprained wrist. it had actually been broken - they had to rebreak it to set it.

but you go into the doctor. the problem you're having is immediate. the person behind the counter frowns and says we're not taking your insurance. you will be paying for this out-of-pocket.

they send you home with tylenol and a little health packet about weight loss or anxiety or attention deficit. on the front it has your birthday and diagnosis. you think about crying, and the words swim. it might as well say go fuck yourself. it might as well say you're a fucking idiot. it might as well say light your money on fire and lie down in it. and the entire fucking time - the problem persists.

it's okay. it's okay, it's just another thing, you think. it's just another thing i have to learn to live with.

tumblr will nsfw your blog for posting two people kissing semi-clothed but with everything covered, whilst simultaneously forcing tumblr live on you forever despite the fact that it's 90% porn