Nov 16, 2020
First You Must Know Something Is Wrong
Everyone’s experience of a diagnosis is different. Here is mine: A key opens a lock I didn’t know existed, sending a door swinging wide.
s.e. smith is a National Magazine Award-winning Northern California-based writer who has appeared in The Guardian, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Bitch Magazine, and numerous other fine publications.
Everyone’s experience of a diagnosis is different. Here is mine: A key opens a lock I didn’t know existed, sending a door swinging wide.
When you attribute someone’s evil actions to their mental health status rather than their actual root cause—like white supremacy—then that evil is no longer presented as a choice.
Disability ruins everything, these stories tell us: disability itself is tragedy. These people’s lives are over, apparently, even though they are palpably still here.
It’s hard to articulate what it feels like to spend a lifetime being told that you are not allowed. Not always in so many words, but in gestures, in spaces, in thoughtlessness.
There is something about sex that feels like an unequivocal “fuck you” to death, taking something back from that which has taken something from you.
When your back is against the wall, dumping your loved ones in the president’s front yard can seem like the only rational response.
You will remember, in fact, the first doctor who does ask, who says ‘is it okay if I put my hands here,’ gesturing, waiting for you to say ‘yes.’
Here’s a thing about being labeled “smart” as a kid: When there’s a thing you’re not good at, people assume it is because you are lazy.
Experiencing a severe reaction to medication taught me many interesting things about the limits of my own body, but also the limits of the world around me.
Those who spend their lives in bodies others deem unworthy grow accustomed to building our own self-worth.
