Latest Posts by lonelyoneszone - Page 8

feel like many ignore the fact that allergies are a very real and serious disability. yes even if its "mainstream" or whatever. its a disability. people suffer. people are discriminated against. peoples lives are threatened. include them in your activism.

[if you are not physically disabled or have nothing to add on to the TOPIC of this post, don't say anything. i refuse to have this derailed. make your own post.]

Friendly (or unfriendly if you're against this) reminder that this blog is supportive of ALL disorders. This blog does not think ANY disorder inherently makes someone a bad person, and is against any disorder being demonized. This blog wholeheartedly believes that a bad person having a disorder, yes, even if things that are also symptoms of their disorder are part of what caused harm, does not make the disorder a "bad" or "evil" disorder or excuse ableism and demonization directed towards the disorder.

Yes this includes personality disorders

Including npd and aspd

Yes this includes all psychotic disorders & disorders that cause psychotic symptoms

Yes this includes paraphilic disorders. All of them.

Yes this includes disorders that cause, or are even characterized by, attention seeking

Yes this includes disorders that directly have lying as a common symptom

Yes this includes dissociative disorders

Yes this includes any disorder with "gross" symptoms

Yes this includes physical disorders too

Yes this includes disorders that can cause loss of control of any kind- control of speech, control of body movement, etc.

Yes tis includes disorders that make someone "look scary"

This goes for literally any fucking disorder. There are not exceptions.

This is something everyone should hear. Like people, will just power through and not realize they are breaking their body/mind doing so. Like if you want to fine. But if it's just to meet other's expectations of you why should you break your body/mind for them?

Hey, it’s ok to not be a “productive member of society.”

Some people are housebound. Bed bound. Some people physically can’t eat, shower, or use the toilet without the assistance of a caretaker. Some people don’t have the spoons to get out of bed in the morning, let alone work a 9-5 job in this capitalist hellhole.

You’re not lazy. You’re not less than.

And this is coming from a disabled person with chronic pain who can leave the house and walk (with some pain) without mobility aids.

You deserve to take up space. You deserve to cost money. You deserve to be here without feeling guilty just because you can’t give back in the traditional way.

You’re worth it, hun. 🫶🏼

I need to say something and I need y'all to be calm

if it isn't actively bad or harmful, no representation should be called "too simple" or "too surface level"

I have a whole argument for this about the barbie movie but today I wanna talk about a show called "the babysitters club" on Netflix

(obligatory disclaimer that I watched only two episodes of this show so if it's super problematic I'm sorry) (yes. I know it's based on a book, this is about the show)

this is a silly 8+ show that my 9 year old sister is watching and it manages to tackle so many complex topics in such an easy way. basic premise is these 13 year old girls have a babysitting agency.

in one episode, a girl babysits this transfem kid. the approach is super simple, with the kid saying stuff like "oh no, those are my old boy clothes, these are my girl clothes". they have to go to the doctor and everyone is calling the kid by her dead name and using he/him and this 13 year old snaps at like a group of doctors and they all listen to her. it's pure fantasy and any person versed in trans theory would point out a bunch of mistakes.

but after watching this episode, my little sister started switching to my name instead of my dead name and intercalating he/him pronouns when talking about me.

one of the 13 years old is a diabetic and sometimes her whole personality is taken over by that. but she has this episode where she pushes herself to her limit and passes out and talks about being in a coma for a while because of not recognizing the limits of her disability.

and this allowed my 9 year old sister to understand me better when I say "I really want to play with you but right now my body physically can't do that" (I'm disabled). she has even asked me why I'm pushing myself, why I'm not using my crutches when I complain about pain.

my mom is 50 years old and watching this show with my sister. she said the episode about the diabetic girl helped her understand me and my disability better. she grew up disabled as well, but she was taught to shut up and power through.

yes, silly simple representation can annoy you if you've read thousands of pages about queer liberation or disability radical thought, but sometimes things are not for you.

rely on someone to meet basic needs and perform basic self-care tasks is okay and morally neutral, but can we talk about how hard it is? how vulnerable it makes you, how dependent it makes you, how tiring it is, how anxiety-producing it is, how it affects your dignity and self-esteem?

how much guilt it brings to constantly ask people to do something for you, especially something basic and presumably "simple." how little privacy you have left when you need someone to assist you with bathing, feeding (putting food from plate to mouth), dressing, moving, brushing your hair and teeth, and other tasks socially considered private and/or very basic.

even if your caretaker(s) are always nice and respectful and patient and do everything like you wish, it may still feel humiliating. and lots of caretakers are not like this, not even close.

and it's hard for you, and it's hard for caretakers, yes, even paid ones, but often our caretakers are not professional and paid workers. often, it's our loved ones. and it creates unique dynamics that are too taboo to discuss because society sees disabled lives, dependent lives as gross, and toxic positivity requires never to show complicated parts of our experiences even in disability rights activism.

depending on someone for surviving and/or daily living is normal, but it's a complicated experience with plenty of nuances, difficulties, problems, and heavy emotions.

it shouldn't be a controversial take but:

disabled people are allowed to hate being disabled

I've been reblogging a fair number of disability related posts in recent (when I actually come online). I'd like to take a moment talk a bit about my condition and frustrations around it. (TW near the end: pet death)

I have fibromyalgia, diagnosed by my rheumatologist after our investigation into my Sjogren's antibodies being six times higher than normal came up with no response to medication designed for it. I'm looking to take the test for fibro to confirm it for my disability case and am aware it only can identify one type, so here's hoping I lucked into at least being able to show medical evidence if my joints being fucked up little pain factories.

I've been seeking disability insurance since 2022 and have reached a remand back to the hearing level from the appeals council. I wasn't expecting it, since the judge pretty much twisted my testimony a bunch, my lawyers abandoned me, and I couldn't manage to interact with social security to get access to my C-file due to my condition--neither being able to get through the misophonia triggering ear pierce of the 120+ minute hold music nor mustering the motivation for getting down to the physical location to wait for hours upon hours in hostile seating and overstimulating environment.

It's been 2+ years since my initial application and I've unemployed for 99% of that. That 1% being a grand total of 10 hours at a major grocery chain in what can only be considered a misguided attempt to cope with no income, which resulted in my entire body shutting down with an explosive flare.

Now, my spouse, bless her, has been able to support me through this whole process. Emotionally and physically. I have a lot of gratitude for her. Unfortunately, with rising costs, being a single income home means we've been eating into our savings. More than half of it.

A kind friend was able to get me a job building ikea grade display furniture for a different major grocery chain. It's less than 15 hours a week and at the pay rate I take about 1000 gross per month. The thing is, while it isn't as intense as the other grocery work, it still causes flare ups, including full body migraines which take me out for a day or so.

I was about to get a new lawyer to help with my remand, until they learned I got this gig. Now, I'd been told by my previous lawyers that to qualify for disability (by legal definitions in the US), you can only work part time and make less than a certain amount each month--about 1600 this year. These new lawyers enlightened me that, while true, any amount you make that nears that limit makes your case harder since the judge gives you the side eye.

So here I am, tearing up my body because we can't afford for me to not do so, and it turns out my hope to get income that doesn't require me to tear up my body is at risk because I'm desperate for income. The government really does hope chronically-ill people either die or get starved out of the application process.

The hardest part is that if I don't keep this application alive, I won't be able to apply again, because (say it with me) I've been too disabled to work enough hours to meet the work credits within the past 10 years from the jump of a new application.

But I'm tired. I'm tired every day. I'm too tired to fully engage with things that bring me joy. I'm tired of thinking about how best to convey to an uncaring system how my conditions affect the quality of my life. I'm tired of searching for the perfect combinations of chemistry that can settle my anxiety, audhd, depression, hypomania, muscle and joint pain. I'm tired of brain fog attacking my ability to engage with topics that matter to me. I'm tired of hiding my pain from my family of origin, because I don't want to listen to their ableism. I'm tired dealing with the self loathing. I'm tired of being me.

I've all about given up hope that I'll get at least this one thing to reduce the pain. And that's what the government hopes will happen. Because they'd rather spend more money in an effort to deny than it would cost to just provide the benefit. Nothing is going to change my condition, whether I get disability or not. The truth is I have chronic conditions that will haunt me for the rest of my life, barring a miracle of science.

But the government isn't concerned with the truth, the law is just an arbitrary metric that says you can't be able to lick envelopes or crouch or lift a certain poundage. It's unconcerned whether there actually exists a job that us exclusively licking envelops that has the hours and pay to amount to a living wage. It's unconcerned with how fucked up you feel after bending down or lifting once or twice. All it cares about is finding that one thing that lets them say 'sorry, thanks for playing.' Even if that thing is is twisting around your testimony.

"Well, he plays video games. Well, he has cats." They honestly will purport that disabled people can't have any modicum of joy in their life, have anything to distract from the horrors. They're looking for anything like that to the point that a judge will hear that conditioned ruined my relationship with my dogs that I had before the conditions reached full blown disability, only to turn around and say "well, he is currently raising dogs." My rescues died from cancer 6 months apart in 2017, prick! What the fuck.

I don't know how to end this rant, so I'll just close with I know there is a lot going on in the world right now and I wish I had more energy to put toward taking a stand. There are people I love who need protection and care and support, but I don't have the resources to provide those things. I can't even provide them for myself. We need reform. We need revolution.

if they get rid of the department of education, that means IEPs and 504s will no longer be federally enforced, instead the state will be given the choice. states can just say it is up to the schools whether or not accommodations are respected, allowing schools to get away with ableism. this is just one of the ways the Trump administration is taking away disabled rights.

I'm lucky because I am graduating high school, but there are so many disabled students who will no longer be protected. call your rep. protest.

the neurodivergent experience:

20% of the time: wowwieee!!! i love my passions and interests!!!!! they make me so happy i want to jump up and down!!!!! weee!!!!!!! :3333333333

80% of the time: this mind is a prison

Ableism is fucking everywhere. And it's so insanely normalized. I was watching a commentary youtube video about a pretty shitty person. And the person who made the video, someone I watch frequently, calls the person a sociopath, a psychopath and a narcissist. Over and over again.

We're people too, what the fuck? Having ASPD or NPD does not equal being a shitty, abusive person. I'm so fucking sick and tired of my struggles being used as a way to insult and label others as abusers.

I am not your fucking horror trope.

i've seen quite a bit of confusion about this, so let me attempt to clear things up :

empathy is the ability to feel somebody's emotions as though they are affecting you personally. for example, somebody tells you "my dog died last night!" -> you now feel as though you've lost a pet personally -> you feel grief and sadness just like the other person. not everyone has empathy. it's a trait some people develop and others don't. some have high empathy, some have low empathy, some (like me) have none.

sympathy is the ability to understand and care about somebody else's struggles, even if you don't feel them yourself. so, somebody tells you their dog died -> you realize how this affects them emotionally -> you care about this person, and are upset that they are suffering. not everyone has sympathy either! it's a scale, just like empathy.

compassion is doing something to relieve another person's suffering or make them feel better. somebody tells you their dog died -> you don't want them to remain upset -> you come up with ways to help them feel better, like offering comfort and distractions, or other forms of support. compassion is a learned trait, not something you can be born with like empathy or sympathy. anyone can learn to be compassionate, although some may struggle more with it than others; it's a skill, just like anything else.

however, none of these are required to be a good person. that's a choice you make on your own accord. i hope this clears things up!

This is the autism website but you must be aware of the unspoken things and the subtle things and everything a normal adult would know and if you say you aren't you are making excuses. This is the autism website but if you bring up autism in any situation where it's not the primary topic you're derailing and making up problems. This is the autism website but we don't talk about autism outside the memes. We do not miss social cues we just ignore them. But this is the autism website.

Still genuinely baffles me every time I remember that the average person isn’t in some form of pain all the time.

Like..not even a tiny bit???

It’s actually crazy to me every time I remember that most people actually don’t experience pain outside of injuries.

please stop immediately giving disabled people suggestions when they talk about their pain, it's not a free pass to assume we haven't tried the most basic things ever before :/

(it's like assuming we haven't thought to drink water if we're thirsty)

Disagree? Respectfully, you can argue with a wall🫶

For real.

abled bodied people also need to understand that, for physically disabled people resting isn't "free time" that you can use up with assigning us tasks or duties because you're busy. it's an essential part of managing disability and some of us have a hard limit that we're avoiding by having days where we do nothing.

This people, need to hear this more often. Like thank you very much you know i have autism so you're treating me kindly. But why do you have to be a prick to that other girl who does the same sh*t i do but without the label.

The label only exists because I want it to mean something. If i didn't tell you i was autistic, would you have just been a prick too to then?

Why this double standard? Like if i don't like something someone did, it's not because of that that I'm a prick to them. Yes i will dislike what the person fid and maybe even tell them but that doesn't give me the right to disrespect them. Like they're still a f*cking human being.

Being accepting of autistic people includes being accepting of "weird" or "annoying" people who you don't know are autistic, BTW. We don't just spawn into existence with a list of diagnoses tattooed on our foreheads. If you claim to be accommodating of autistic people, but then get pissed off when someone shows a symptom of autism because your default assumption is that they're just an allistic person who's annoying you for no reason, then you aren't actually all that accommodating of autistic people.

on the topic of mobility aids i just want to throw out a non-comprehensive list of tips from someone who's been using mobility aids for 10 years

everyone has different needs and responds differently to certain mobility aids

if a cane isn't right for you, it doesn't mean you shouldn't look into other aids to see if they help

neurological conditions and things like strokes and brain aneurysms can cause someone to struggle with balance for life and are more than welcome to try out mobility aids

it doesn't matter if it's a genetic condition or an injury- consider an aid

wearing braces and using walkers, canes, and so on is very normal after injuries. please use them if you are in pain for a long time after an injury. injuries are serious too

if you buy a cane and it didn't work out for you, you're hurting no one

folding canes are helpful but have a lower weight limit generally speaking

crutches may be a good idea for you if you really struggle with balance and stability

your mileage will vary with each type of aid. you may benefit more from one aid at one time, and more from another in other situations. you may need several different kinds

if you need a rollator, wheelchair or scooter, it really is okay to get or try one. if your insurance won't cover it it's okay to buy or crowdfund one

walkers and rollators require low upper body strength, unless they need to be lifted up on to a curb in which case the user may need assistance

even the lightest and most well constructed wheelchairs are still heavy. they require a lot of upper body strength and mass to propel if you are doing it completely by yourself. you may also need assistance transporting them, getting them up or down hills, on to curbs, and so on

if you struggle to walk for extended periods of time (30+ minutes uninterrupted) you probably need some type of aid. if you have poor balance you may need some type of aid.

you're not hurting anyone if you end up not needing the aids. it's fine to try them

it doesn't matter if the pain or exhaustion or bad balance is related to your weight. you deserve to be as mobile as you want to and can be. its okay for fat people to use mobility aids. it's not embarrassing. being a fat person using a mobility aid in public isn't embarrassing. the people insinuating that are. fat people deserve quality of life

With or without capitalism, some of us are still disabled and going to continue being disabled for the rest of our lives.

Comic by howbabycomic.com. Perfect for people with chronic illnesses and disabilities