#decide that my life isn't worth living and neither I nor my mother should have been born

[lastoneout]

Sorry to put this screed on people's dashes again but also the thing that gets me is the whole "I believe it’s selfish to knowingly bring a child into the world who will suffer" thing 'cuz like...no one gets through life without suffering at some point?? Life isn't all sunshine and rainbows for anyone, even abled people. We all go through loss and grief and rejection, we all feel pain, we get bullied or embarrass ourselves, some of us will be abused and most of us will have relationships end in messy ways, we all have to come to terms with our own mortality no matter how scary it is, we get sick(and not just in disabled ways like broken arms and UTIs and the flu all SUCK), we all have to deal with not getting something we desperately want be it a job or acceptance into a college or an award or book deal, at some point we will simply not be enough and we just have to keep going, and like...maybe it's just me but I don't think all of that pain and discomfort negates all of the joy being alive can bring.

Like, I can't think too hard about knowing my partner will outlive me OR that I might outlive him because the thought of being without him or him being without me is absolutely devastating. I had a cancer scare in 2023 and I spent the week waiting for the test results sobbing because I felt so horrible for possibly leaving the man I love behind. But you know what I didn't do? Decide that pain meant I shouldn't be in a relationship. All of the joy completely outweighs the pain I know one of us will have to feel one day. And my fiance didn't leave me either, and I know he wouldn't give me up to avoid the pain of losing me either.

As another example, I lost my closest friend to leukemia in 2018. I have never felt pain like that before, I'd never lost anyone. And if I could go back to the day we met in High School I would never even consider deciding not to befriend him because I knew I would lose him and it would kill me. Or my dogs, they're both gone now, of cancer and old age, and I would adopt them again without a second thought, all of the joy they brought me was worth the unimaginable pain of losing them. I know my cat will die one day and I would adopt her all over again too, and one day I will adopt new pets, knowing they will die, and not caring because the time we will have together is more than enough.

There is not a single person or pet that I've lost that would make me second guess welcoming them into my life again. Hell I have NIGHTMARES about getting sent back to relive the last 15 years of my life because I would be scared to fuck up and miss out on my friends and adopting my pets and meeting the love of my life. The pain of missing those connections and having to live without ever having met them 100% outweighs the pain I will feel or have felt from losing them.

I know there are probably disabled people who are miserable enough they wish the had never been born, but overall disabled people love life more than any other group of people I've ever encountered. My illness has taken a lot from me. I can't go hiking anymore, and thus I can't fulfill my dream of doing the Rim to Rim hike at the Grand Canyon or to the peak of any of the mountains I live near. I had to quit my movie theater job even though I would have happily worked there for the rest of my life. I also can't be an ASL interpreter like I wanted because I can't stand for very long and I have dyslexia bad enough that finger spelling is basically impossible for me. I can't do yoga anymore even though I really enjoyed it. I would love to be a singer, but I was abused in ways that have given me debilitating stage freight and I truly don't know if I can ever get over it. I can't run through a field, I can't have a job, I can't drink anymore, I might never get to visit countless places on earth I'd love to go...and if I had the choice between never experiencing all of this pain and never being born I would pick the pain every single time.

Life is suffering, but it's also love, and joy, and fun, and so many other things. Even for disabled people, life is never just suffering. So who the fuck are these people to decide that we don't deserve to experience the happiness life has to offer us all because we might suffer at some point in a way an abled person wouldn't?? I don't think these people would agree that knowing neither you nor your partner will live forever means you shouldn't get married. They probably don't think knowing your pets will die one day means you shouldn't adopt them. I don't think they would not have kids because those kids will experience a breakup or losing a pet or getting sick or any of the little moments of pain we all go through.

I saw so many people in the comments insist that a disabled loved one clearly suffered constantly and never felt any joy, or if they did it "wasn't enough for it to be worth it" and so that means they should have never been born, and again I have to ask, who the fuck are you to decide that that person's life wasn't worth living? Did you ask them? Or did you just assume because you can't imagine living like that? It's not your fucking life. You don't get to decide that for someone else, and the fact that you're trying to means you do not view disabled people as people. You see them as mistakes. And I'm sorry, but I have absolutely no interest in being around someone who looks at me and people like me and sees a tragedy instead of a person.

Neanderthals and early humans cared for their disabled, they knew our lives were worth it and put in the work to make us happy and comfortable because they loved us. I won't lie and say caring for us is always easy or that modern society doesn't make it so much harder than it needs to be(I s2g the people who were like "well money tho" and I'm like that's a capitalism problem not a fucking disabled person problem), but if people who didn't even have agriculture believed our lives were worth saving I don't know why the fuck modern humans can't at the very least do the same.

(Also ngl the whole "raising a kid like that is selfish" thing kinda makes it sound like she's in favor of "mercy" killing disabled babies so like. Hope that was a fucking poor choice of words and not something she actually believes!)

the internet is fun sometimes but other times you see an AITA where someone is saying they think it's wrong for people with inheritable genetic conditions to have kids because it's cruel and selfish to bring a child into the world if you know they could suffer and while I typically would not wish harm on another person I start thinking that maybe Dorothy Golden Girls was right about some people needing to become very sick and very scared at least once in their lives so they can realize exactly what it's like to live in a world where people think you should have been killed as a baby to spare you and the people in your life the burden of having to deal with a disabled person existing near them and needing their help and also that you're a selfish monster for having kids

[countesspetofi]

Too late to make a long story short

So, yeah. I planned on posting this last June, but I never got around to it because I was going through some health problems that had me pretty drained both physically and emotionally. And I'm actually getting around to it pretty late in life, for reasons which I'll briefly discuss further down.

This is my official coming out. I've tried to talk about it with my mother, but I don't think she really completely gets it, and I didn't want to push her. It's not that I don't think she'd be supportive - she absolutely would - but I just haven't got the mental energy.

I'm the IA that so often gets left off the end of LGBTQIA+. That is, Intersex and Asexual. And although I haven't deliberately tried to hide it (and for all I know, people may have guessed and just never mentioned it), there are a few reasons why I've never made this sort of open declaration before.

Firstly, I can't deny that I have a great deal of passing privilege that has made my life easier. I was AFAB and still identify as female. I wasn't born with ambiguous genitalia or subjected to lies and/or "corrective" surgery as a minor. There are plenty of other circumstances in my life, like poverty and disability, which people were free to assume were the reason I've never been in a long-term romantic relationship. I'm neither aro nor sex-repulsed, so I've never made an effort to stay out of conversations about celebrity crushes or the aesthetics of the human form. (Although, like a lot of ace folk of my generation, I grew up totally believing most people were really like me and just put on a show of being sex-obsessed because the media told hem they should be.) Now that so many married friends my age are divorced, my single state isn't even as as uncommon as it used to be. In addition, I'm a bit of a coward. I've seen other ace women have to deal with "jokes" and thinly veiled threats about "corrective r*pe," and as a survivor of childhood SA I was a bit panicky about having those directed at me, even if only online.

Secondly, I didn't discover my intersex condition or the terminology to describe my asexuality until adulthood. It was helpful TO ME to be able to understand myself though those lenses, but I wasn't so sure it made much of a difference to anybody else. I've been called attention-seeking for discussing my disabilities, medical issues, childhood experiences with abuse, etc., and it felt like I'd be inviting more of the same.

Thirdly, I know that some very outspoken people exist, both inside and outside the queer community, who don't think intersex or asexual people are "queer enough" to be included. I've heard everything from "It's only the LGBT that really count" to "How can you expect us to remember two more letters?" to "those things are about what you're NOT and not what you ARE." And I really don't take rejection well.

So, why have I decided to go ahead and "officially" come out? The past few years have seen some real threats against the progress we've made just in my lifetime. If there's one thing living in this century has taught me, it's that you can never sit back and take progress for granted. I'm having trouble finding the exact quote and its source, but somebody said something to me recently about democracy being to fragile to be left unattended, and it really stuck with me. I may only be one person, but I think I can probably be more useful if I stand up to be counted. I don't know, maybe I can't do anything more than I could when presenting as a straight ally, but if even one person takes what I say more seriously because they know where I'm coming from, and that I'm talking about my own experiences, I think it's worth it.

Anyway, here are my lame attempts to combine the intersex and ace flags. I've never been ashamed of what I am, but it does feel nice to openly show a bit of pride.