charlie

Today my apartment building (I live in on-campus living) had a fire drill. I live on the ninth floor. The last few times we’ve had one I’ve been able to drag myself downstairs with the help of my roommates and I’ve had several flareups because of this.

When the alarm went off, I decided to see if I could get an exception to use the elevator instead, even though we technically aren’t supposed to use them. I’m already in a flareup and I would not have been able to make it downstairs without assistance, and I did not want to make my symptoms even worse.

There was a security guard in my floor’s common area. I asked him if I could use the elevators and he said no. I asked what I should do, gesturing to my cane so he knew I wasn’t going to be able to go down the stairs. He told me to sit down and wait for his supervisor.

He was on the phone with his supervisor for several minutes, and eventually the supervisor came upstairs. He asked if I was the one who needed medical help and I said yes. He then asked if this was a “temporary or long-term thing.” I told him it was long-term.

Then he says, “well, you can’t use the elevators. If there’s a fire in the elevator room, they won’t work, so we shut them down for drills.”

I asked what I was supposed to do then, and he said: “Why are you even living here? You shouldn’t be living on the ninth floor. You need to talk to ODS (Office of Disability Services) and move to a different apartment.”

The original security guard chimed in with, “you should just go back to your room and wait it out. And then both of them just left.

They didn’t even try to offer assistance or come up with a solution. No asking what my capabilities were, no offering to help me down the stairs, no trying to figure out a way for me to safely exit the building. Nothing. They just turned it around on me, blamed me for daring to not live on the ground floor.

If worse came to worst and there WAS a real fire, I would find a way to get out. I’d take the flareup over dying. But what if I couldn’t walk? What if I was in a wheelchair, or could only walk a few steps? What then? And what if this was the only apartment I could afford? What if this was the only room that was available? What if ODS was not accessible to me? What if for one reason or another I couldn’t get housing accommodations?

Would I just be left to die because the people whose job it is to help people decided they couldn’t be bothered to at least TRY to come up with a solution?

The worst part is, during one of the previous drills, security told us: “If you’re disabled and need help exiting the building, please let us know, and we’ll come up with a plan.” And yet when I did that, the best they could offer me was essentially telling me “you’d better hope there’s not a real fire, because we’re not going to help you if there is.”

now we have like. our descriptors one (adjectives mostly), verbs, and nouns, and those are basically folders that hold more folders

our descriptors one is still kind of an exception, but if you go there it's divided into colors, personality traits, identities, shapes, emotions, etc, etc, and then you scroll down to buttons for whatever doesnt need it's own folder yet

Disabled people often die from a lack of support. A lot of disability aids are not a luxury, but a basic need in order to live.

“Well what happens if—” people die. People hurt themselves. People hurt others. Disabled people don’t magically become abled if our needs aren’t met.

If a bedbound quadriplegic is caught in a housefire, and there’s nobody there to save them, they’ll probably die. They won’t magically become able-bodied out of sheer will.

If a nonspeaking/nonverbal autistic is denied access to alternative methods of communication, they’ll suffer in silence. They won’t spontaneously become capable of speech.

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Someone may have a special interest in a show, but instead of that meaning that they will talk about that show often, it may mean they watch that show extremely frequently.