naming disability, and cripspiration
What do you call your disability? Rude words, often, of course. But more seriously I'm unsure whether or not I should use terms like 'an autistic' or 'a diabetic'. I tend to be cautious, and say things like 'a person who has autism', because I know that I wouldn't be very impressed if somebody called me 'a multiple sclerotic'. But perhaps it's just
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It's true that labels are very powerful. Do you find it helps, in explaining yourself to people, to focus on the tip-of-iceberg stuff? The parts people actually need to know about? I ask because some of my most intrusive MS symptoms are deeply unglamorous - things that I talk about on my own LJ page but not here on this public thread and not in my workplace. I've recently started to anounce only the indirect effects which are relevant to conversations. Like, telling a senior colleague that I'm taking so long to write our current academic paper because I've had a bout of severe insomnia which saps my ability to think. When phe remarked that phe hadn't heard of insomnia as an MS symptom, I replied that it's an indirect effect and that I'm now using different treatment for it. So here I am, writing that paper!
So I'm thinking that you perhaps don't need to list all those diagnoses about yourself. Not in all situations, anyway. Does it work for you to tell people, eg, 'I use crutches because I've got some kind of muscle-weakness disability, the doctors are still trying to decide exactly what it is, but meanwhile, please can I have that chair?'
Your mother was well out of order to announce details about you like that. Did you ever talk to her about what she'd done? I've noticed that sometimes, parents' attitudes to their daughters and sons don't grow up fast enough. As though you're still a baby, with no privacy, long after you've grown up. And it's worst of all when you're a teenager because that's such a sensitive age.
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