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Screw the social model of disability.

I need to get this off my chest.

The popular understanding of the social model of disability has undermined my ability to be taken seriously. Yes, I am going to make this about me.

When people get on their soapboxes and start insisting that certain conditions wouldn't be disabling if society accommodated for them appropriately, 99% of the time, I am who they are imagining. I am a high masking neurodivergent. And I mean high af masking. I have two degrees, a full time job, a house, a fiancee, a step child, pets, and a car. As long as I hide my teeth, there is no outward sign of my disability to a stranger. Maybe someone might notice my pupils if I'm hypomanic. Only the slightest hint that something is wrong, and I've never had somebody pick up on it unless they knew my diagnoses.

What you will notice is my lack of social comfort. I'm very weird. I'm high masking, so I can play it off well. I really lean into it like it's a bit. I am the manic pixie dream girl. I am the quirky autistic. I am the fun, wild, enigmatic neurodivergent. I am a lot of fun in small doses.

But I am also the person who makes other disability advocates sick. I am the one who is disavowed. I am the one who is accused of "speaking over" others whenever I use my voice. I live in the grey area between fucked up and not fucked up enough.

So I am the perfect example for a stranger to point at and say, "If society didn't expect [X] from her, she wouldn't be disabled at all." In that moment, I am wholly invalidated in a way they cannot fathom. In that moment, I truly am the manic pixie dream girl, having her individual experience collapsed into a surface level understanding of how she interacts with the rest of the world. My inner world is irrelevant.

I can't clean myself.

I can't clean my house.

I can't manage my finances.

I can't tell when I have to use the bathroom.

I can't tolerate sunlight.

I can't tell how long anything will take or has taken.

I can't predict my energy levels.

I can't follow through on projects.

I can't update this fucking blog regularly.

My teeth are rotting. My esophagus is dissolving. My spine aches, and I can't finish a meal lately, no matter how hard I try.

But go ahead and boil my condition down to a quirkiness that the world can make allowances for. Insist that it's enough to not expect me to be on time, and ignore how I can't manage a short to do list on a completely open, unscheduled day. At your very worst, insist that the abundance of accommodations you provide me are proof that I'm not actually impaired at all.

It's the same as the conversation we keep having about glasses. I can't see. I can put on glasses. I can put on contact lenses. Even when I do, my eyes are still the wrong shape.

I was born wrong. I just was. I don't have to pretend that I am perfect to love myself. Perfection is not a prerequisite for acceptance. Society has a lot wrong with it, but it is not to blame for my broken brain, and you cannot fix me by changing your behavior. I pity anyone who cannot feel both broken and beautiful.

This shit feeds the people who insist that people like me are faking. Boil my entire condition down to quirkiness, and you have a legion of people arguing that it's not real. Sweep all the ugly parts under the rug, and you have entire communities insisting that we don't need help. To these people, the litter box is overflowing, and my teeth are aching because I'm a loser, not because I'm sick.

I don't need society to see me as capable. I don't want to be reframed as not disabled. I need people to understand that I am impaired. I need people to understand that my medications and therapies are keeping me alive. I need to be given grace and accommodations, not to eliminate my conditions, but to allow me to live a dignified life with them.

When you insist that disability is relative, you're not decentering the neurotypical experience. You're just pretending that we're not the weirdos. But we are the weirdos. And that's morally neutral. You can acknowledge an impairment without imposing a hierarchy beyond that of simple function. Yeah, neurotypical people are, on average, better at paying bills than I am. They can be good at that. I'm okay with them besting me in that arena. My worth as a human being isn't sapped from my bones just because somebody else is better at taking out the trash when it gets full.

Just let me be sick, ffs.

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The thing about ADHD is that the "lack of reward chemicals in your brain" doesn't just mean that you don't want to do any tasks that don't feel particularly yummy :(, it means that your brain will look at chores and tasks that need to be done like "doing this would be painful and tedious for absolutely nothing to gain from it, Do Not Do That." The same thing that your brain tells you about everything else that would feel really bad and hurt the entire time that you're dying. The part of your brain that stops you from doing the thing is the same part that keeps you from shoving your arm into a wood chipper.

With unmedicated, unmanaged ADHD, "I have to do this assignment or I fail and my life will be ruined and I die" feels like a SAW trap, every single time.

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1. Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human // 2. Pinterest // 3. Franz Kafka, Diaries, (1910-1923) // 4. Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human // 5. Pinterest // 6. Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice // 7. @/king_natasha on flickr // 8. Pinterest // 9. David Levithan, Love Is the Higher Law // 10. Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice

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Note: The title is absolutely not in support of person first language. It was purely a stylistic choice. “Disabled students” is not incorrect or insulting in any way. Miss me with that ableism and erasure.

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Is there a way to fix the paralysis loop of wanting to do something but my brain deciding that it has to feel right and ending up doing nothing all day or should I abuse substances

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[on the verge of having a complete breakdown] i need to make some kind of list or perhaps sort things into categories

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if you can’t handle me at my sunshine riptide, you don’t deserve my kintsugi kid

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I hear that

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"i would kill for you" "i would die for you" okay but would you forgive me if i forgot something important for the 51204th time in a row even though i tried my best to remember

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Neurodivergent Magic To Make An Item Disappear:

Pick up the item

Hold the item securely in your hands

Get distracted by something

The item is no longer detectable on this plane of existence

There is no reversal spell. The item will never be seen again.

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have we tried substance abuse my liege

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The thing about knitting is it’s much harder to fear the existential futility of all your actions while you’re doing it.

Like ok, sure, sometimes it’s hard to believe you’ve made any positive impact on the world. But it’s pretty easy to believe you’ve made a sock. Look at it. There it is. Put it on, now your foot’s warm.

Checkmate, nihilism.

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“Why is the best autistic representation accidental?” Because then the media is actually focused on portraying them as a human rather than a diagnosis