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metatextuality · 6 years ago

Text

Broken Parts

(prompted by this post on lasting physical injury. tagging @aerialsquid and @whetstonefires because i expect this disorganised character exploration is at least relevant to their interests.)

The Jester’s face is a mass of scar tissue.

When people hear that, they usually say things like “I’m so sorry,” and, “That must have been awful.” They don’t think of things like two-month psychotic break or traumatic amnesia – or if they do, they assume it’s a vanity thing, even if they don’t normally think of appearance as particularly important; that J’s biggest problem was the violent disfigurement of his face into something unrecognisable instead of –

– the fact that the bleaching and discolouration go far more than skin-deep: the Jester can’t feel most of his face, most of the time; the muscles are drawn painfully rigid into something just short of lockjaw, so that if he doesn’t pay close attention and check his reflection in nearby surfaces often his mouth stretches automatically back into a ghastly gum-baring grin. He had to relearn how to talk like a parrot or a ventriloquist because it was too hard and hurt too much to bring his lips together for every P or B or F or V. He has to massage his jaw for ten minutes or so after waking up in order to loosen the muscles enough to open it; after he cracked a molar in his sleep, Francis (Dulmacher, the surgeon who treated him without asking for documentation or reimbursement, and who was clearly more used to being addressed by title and last name as befitting a professional but resigned himself fairly quickly to J’s reflexive familiarity) made him start wearing a polymer mouthguard at night.

– his throat hurts all the time. The Jester’s voice rasps like a violin played with a badly-frayed bowstring, and crackles like broken glass when he laughs; that’s what happens when a person inhales hazardous industrial chemicals.

– the numbness covers his entire body, not just his face. The Jester moves like a drunken master, or like a Weeble that wobbles but doesn’t fall down; people seem to react like this is just a him thing, a relatively unimportant eccentricity amongst the already vertiginous pile of eccentricities that has somehow kept him from getting killed so far, instead of realising that it’s because he always loses track of where his limbs are and has gotten used to compensating. Whenever he gets into the shower he notices new bruises he didn’t remember acquiring. This also means that he routinely performs superhuman feats of strength because he doesn’t notice sprains and dislocations until after the fact and doesn’t have a reference baseline to calibrate his expectations to. (It drives Owlman crazy that he can hit the Jester with two-hundred-something pounds of force behind it and J will just pop back up like a jack-in-the-box nearly every time, which is a silver lining.)

– there may, in fact, be something superhuman about him. Francis has lamented at length about his desire to examine Extruded Man for comparison, because the Jester’s body heals from things it shouldn’t in ways that, quote, “defy scientific canon” and bends in ways that “shouldn’t be possible without injury”. Most people, it turns out, don’t find back handsprings an equally intuitive form of locomotion as walking. (Which is to say, equally unintuitive, but it isn’t really a big deal for J to use his hands instead of – or in addition to – his feet, especially when he’s used to catching his balance with them all the time anyway.)

– J has at least two bullet scars, one of which he remembers getting. Owlman usually seems to prefer blades, which J has an easier time avoiding due to an instinctive desire not to be stabbed with them, but which leave more memorable scars. The rest of his skin has the slightly-crinkly texture of a burn scar; Francis was quite emphatic about the fact that whatever marks his body had before the incident at the chemical plant, the acid burned them away. This includes things like fingerprints.

– he can’t taste most food. Spicy things help, but once in a while the capsaicin comes into contact with a spot on his tongue or the insides of his cheeks where the nerves haven’t all died and it burns like acid in an open wound. Sweets are more reliable.

– when he’s as fully recovered as he’ll likely ever be, J can see about thirty feet in front of him before things start to lose focus; focusing on things in general makes his head hurt, especially when his eyes start vibrating with the effort of adjusting in tandem. He got a fifteen-dollar pair of glasses from a corner store one time but always forgets to put them on because he can see well enough in most circumstances not to need them until he does (and, well, he usually carries a pair of binoculars anyway for Reasons). He was lucky not to lose his vision completely; he still doesn’t produce tears the way he’s apparently supposed to, and sometimes forgets to blink as much as he should and then wonders why his eyes hurt so much.

– Harley says there’s no way to tell which cognitive effects are of biological origin and which were impacted by chemical damage short of an autopsy. (DNA analysis could indicate certain predispositions, but she was very clear about that not being sufficient for diagnosis.) Mania is only diagnosed in contrast to a pre-existing personality baseline, which they don’t have; J doesn’t generally hallucinate unless something else interesting is causing it, and doesn’t really experience the negative affective issues, so schizophrenia and the Cluster A disorders are out despite a tendency toward hyperactive apophenia and disorganised thought tangents – Harley’s said that in circumstances with a clearer medical history, she might propose ADHD, but given that nonvital medications aren’t reliably within their reach and that J and his friends have practice compensating for his distractibility and unorthodox processing, it’s more useful as a reference paradigm than a concrete diagnosis. (Jon looked vaguely disturbed at the suggestion that he synthesise amphetamine salts given the possibility of exacerbating the Jester’s symptoms, perhaps permanently, but agreed that it was worth experimenting with under controlled conditions with J’s consent. All they really did in the end was make J more whatever-he-is for about four hours, which might be useful under certain circumstances but was a bit too extreme even for Gotham's motley collection of vigilantes to deal with regularly.)

– traumatic amnesia, the fact that the Jester struggles to recall more than bits and pieces of a prior life that doesn’t feel like it belonged to him, means that J’s medical history is at most a best-guess approximation – which means that he once got shingles for a month because it turned out he’d never been vaccinated. He hadn’t even known that was a possibility. Francis and Harley ganged up on him to make sure he got the entire panel of booster shots as a precaution after that.

– no one tells you that leprosy actually affects the peripheral nervous system, and that the more well-known symptoms are usually a result of infected wounds that go unnoticed due to loss of sensation. The implications of full-body nerve damage due to chemical burns are left as an exercise for the reader. (Upon discharging him a second time after the Jester broke out of the clinic mid-recovery from The Chemical Bath Incident, Francis slapped an enormous tube of combined-antibiotic ointment into J’s hands with instructions to perform a complete physical exam no less than every two weeks for the rest of his life, preferably with assistance.)

#earth 3 #the jokester #the jester #crisis on two earths #dc #for $8000 a month i will stop #attempting to type up character meta on four hours of sleep is definitely a good idea with no possible downside #did you know that the joker and red hood in BtBatB never stop grinning even while speaking because i think about that Constantly #there obviously had to be someone else in the leslie thompkins role so the Dollmaker seemed a reasonable choice

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fionawesome · 8 years ago

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A world that wants me dead

I live in a world that wants me dead.

I didn't realise it until recently.

Until about a month ago I was naive enough to think that, because I'm not properly disabled, the world had spared me the ordeal of a life marred with death, just because I'm not useful to society. For some reason I thought that because I was managing well enough or because I'm not physically disabled that I was spared the horror of living as a disabled person in a world built for non-disabled people.

My earliest memories are of feeling different and at the age of 7 or 8 I was diagnosed with Dyspraxia, a form of developmental coordination disorder that affects motor control, coordination, memory, perception and processing.

When I was 20, The Tories (along with the Lib Dems) got into power in the UK and quite soon after they started doing their best to make life for the rich, easier, and life for the poor harder. It started with small things that could be reasoned away but after a few years their disregard for anyone who wasn't born with a silver spoon up their asses was more blatant than ever before and it wasn't long before a large proportion of the population were vocally riling against the government in a way unprecedented since they tyrannical rule of Thatcher in the 80's.

One of the first things that they started with was the dismantling of the glorious institution of the NHS. It started by underfunding services and then bringing in outside contractors as a way to deal with the difficulties faced by a health system that's crumbling and falling. It then continued with an attempt to stretch doctors so thin that medical care failed at the point of service so that, once again the services could be sold off to the highest bidder, and so that the suffering of the poorest in society could be justified in the eyes of those either, easily misled by the media, or those used to closing their eyes and sticking heads in the sands.

A while later, this assault on the poorest and most vulnerable in our society continued by making the conditions of that society so unbearable as to either force many people to commit suicide or to cause people to die after being declared "fit for work". The longer that this continued (and indeed, as it still continues), the more blatant it became that this was an outright attack on those most in need of help and the larger the divide seemed to get between those who are classified as "disabled" (and therefore of no use to society) and those who are considered able to "function" within society (and thus, not disabled; no matter how many difficulties they).

It was around this time that I started to become increasingly frustrated with the way that society was drastically devaluing disabled people and my compassion for those who I saw as having it worse off than myself, was increased tenfold. Of course, all of this took place from inside my ivory tower of university life, reasonable accommodations and disability supremacy.

A returning theme in my life is one of self-hatred, caused by the self-doubt instilled in me by an educational system that would not deign to change itself, lest it make my life easier, or my education more worthwhile but I still held inside of me some supremacy when it came to the dichotomy between disabled and not disabled. I didn't engage in the wider disabled community because because I didn't see myself as being disabled enough to face difficulties on the same size/scale as those faced by people with physical disabilities. This was pure ignorance on my part, and I will never attempt to explain away or excuse my views at this point in my life because it shows a complete lack of understanding about disability and throws a fair few people (myself included) under the bus. I'm including it here to highlight how people outside of the disabled community can think about disability, and also to highlight the way in which, at one point, I disregarded the onslaught towards disabled people, purely because it didn't affect me personally.

After I graduated from university I sought out help for the all pervasive feelings of inattentiveness, and attention based difficulties and was eventually diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 23.

I eventually began to see how my Dyspraxia and ADHD were causing me issues within my life and how the world outside of student life was vastly effected by my inability to adhere to neurotypical standards of "functioning". This was so much so, that after a few failed attempts at employment the DWP suggested that I seek help from the charity Scope. It was through this that I saw my disorganisation, inattentiveness, and general lack of knowledge about the world, catch up with me at full speed, and it was through this that I finally realised that I needed more help with my life than I was willing to admit.

Flash forward a few years and at 27 I am currently experiencing autistic burnout.

After my partner broached the topic of me fitting the diagnostic criteria for autism, and after a few years of self-examination and self-discovery, 6 months ago I started self-diagnosing as autistic.

It was around this time that I started to feel my whole world fall apart.

I've asked myself so many times whether this is all related to my realising that I'm autistic, or whether it's all just some cosmic coincidence. I don't believe in coincidence that's for sure, so mostly my answer has landed on "shit I'm autistic, I should probably be autistic". Of course this is an over-simplification and implies that I had any choice in the matter which is simply untrue, but I can't help but feel like on some level, once I realised I was autistic I became more autistic on purpose. This probably isn't the case and there's plenty of anecdata to suggest that it's a natural progression in the life-cycle of diagnosis for an autistic person (self or professional).

The point is, that I started to feel as if my whole life was falling apart. I could no longer organise myself as easily as I was once able, I was finding social interactions increasingly difficult and I was finding the world of employment to be filled with sensory, emotional, and cognitive challenges on a daily basis. There was a period of about a month where this got so bad that every time I woke up I was (with barely any sensory input), overwhelmed by everything and was forced to either sit in bed on the verge of tears, or fall back asleep in the hope that facing the world might be easier after a nap. It was during this time that I eventually created a set of "communication cards" to allow me to help myself communicate effectively during moments of distress or overload, in the hope that I could regain some kind of "control" over my life and my descent into "burnout".

Whilst this form of alternative communication has proven very useful for me and has helped me on countless occasions, it did nothing to slow my descent into burnout. That, it seems, was inevitable.

It is in the depth of this burnout that I realised a few key things.

The first is that I need to figure out better ways of taking care of myself. My current strategy of burying my head in the sand and hoping that things will get better on their own is damaging not only my mental health but also (at times) my physical health. This is something that I can do something about and it is something with measurable outcomes that allows me to attempt to improve my life, or at the very least navigate the difficulties that I face on a daily basis.

The second is that I live in a world that wants me dead.

It's taken me a long time to come to this realisation but it is undoubtedly true.

I see this now.

I live in a world that constantly devalues my existence, that insists that I adhere to neurotypical standards of "functioning" and of "productivity". I live in a world that will NOT under any circumstance change the rules because my brain cannot follow the rules already set in place. I live in a world that will throw me to one side and close their eyes to my daily struggle, just because it's not their problem. I live in a world that drives compassionate people into media-driven malevolence, towards those who need some help. I live in a world where I do not ask for help on a daily basis because I know that there's not much chance it will make any difference.

I recently wrote a long post about how I struggle with incontinence and after seeing various doctors, multiple times I have given up on ever finding out why it's an issue, and just resorted to "navigating" the issue myself.

I did have a referral for an ultrasound on my bladder but I missed it because I had a last minute, emergency, appointment with the out of hours GP at 5am that same day, because I had misplaced a whole box of my anti-depressant medication a few days earlier and was feeling an significant decrease in my mood.

I can almost hear the replies already.

"It's not up to the NHS or the government or anyone to help organise yourself."

"You could quite easily just get re-referred for the ultrasound."

I could write more but I'm too tired of this kind of shit to be bothered.

There's been plenty of proof that survival of the fittest is a lazy concept invented by dominant (white, cis, straight, middle class) people to justify their treatment of the subservient (working class, disabled, queer, POC), and I'm not going to justify that kind of attitude with a counter argument other than to say; get your fucking act together and pull your heads out of your arses before I forcibly do so myself.

I have "severe" problems with;

Attention

Organisation

Social interactions

Talking to people

Memory

Planning things in advance

Losing things

Following instructions

Sitting still

Changes in routine

Understanding social rules

The list could go on.

Why don't you try re-arranging a referral to a specialist, whilst facing these difficulties? You probably wouldn't fucking do it, let alone manage to get the second referral.

I have these problems not because I'm lazy and not because I don't try to overcome them, but because my brain works in such a way that I find these things difficult.

I did not choose this. I do not enjoy having these difficulties. I do not have these difficulties because I don't try to overcome them.

I face these difficulties on a daily basis because this is the way my brain works.

I have no control over the fact that I find these things difficult, just like I have no control over my eye colour, or my height.

To ostracise a whole section of society and to force a great number of them to commit suicide, or be forcibly killed by unfair and unsafe assessments to their health, JUST BECAUSE of something they cannot control, (be it neurological or physical differences), is vile, heinous, and makes it very blatantly clear that although society believes the genocide of people (based on their differences) is consigned to our history, it is very much a part of our present.

I live in a world that wants me dead.

I live in a world that wants me dead and most people wouldn't bat an eyelid.

I LIVE IN A WORLD THAT WANTS ME DEAD BUT FUCK THAT SHIT I AIN'T DONE RAISING HELL JUST YET.

If you're not angry, then follow these steps;

Take your left hand.

Hold onto your right wrist.

Punch yourself in the face a few times.

See how it feels to beaten by someone who's supposed to be helping you.

Cry

With Anger

The Finnarchist/FionAwesome

Cross posted from my other blog: https://unremarkablethings.wordpress.com/2017/03/07/a-world-that-wants-me-dead/

#ableism #ableists #autism #autistic #dyspraxia #dyspraxic #adhd #society #conservative party #tories #ableist society #self hatred #internalised ableism #internalized ableism #death #mention of death #mention of suicide

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