Aug 25, 2020
Disability Sucks Sometimes. Why is it Taboo to Say So?
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.
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.
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.
It is not so much that these things are invisible as it is that people are trained to hide them, and society is conditioned to look away from them.
My trans friends rarely come home, and when they do, it is for brief bursts of time. They question why I’ve chosen to keep living here.
