Sirius Collective

I was chatting with my best friend recently (who is a service dog handler) about the pros and cons of having a service dog, since her current SD is Waverly’s age and her SDIT prospect puppy is a month young than Willa (pic for tax) and we were noting the difference between our puppies as mine fucked off across the yard to entertain herself and hers harassed her for attention. We commented on how perfectly our dogs fit into our lives, right down to the accommodations that are most important for our individual disabilities.

For her, having a medical alert dog who can assist with mobility tasks provides her with independence she wouldn’t otherwise have. She loves to train, so having goldens who live to work with her is right up her alley. The level of safety that her SD provides more than offsets the extra work of planning outings and organizing gear, though it can still be tiring. It has allowed her to work full time again, on a flexible schedule, and care for herself in ways that would be difficult without them. In short, they have dramatically increased her quality of life.

For me, my biggest needs around my disability (autism) are being able to quickly lower mental demands, take breaks from performing or being perceived, and being able to check out. Constantly being followed or perceived by a dog would drive me nuts. I can get overstimulated by being touched when I don’t want to or aren’t expecting it. This is why I do not own herding breeds or retrievers. I have a breed whose needs are still met if I can just take them somewhere to run off leash with very little engagement from me. I also hate strangers talking to me. It stresses me out. I prefer to fly under the radar in public as much as possible.

I adore Waverly and I don’t want her with me all the time. None of the symptoms of my disability could be better mitigated by having a service dog than they already are with my current lifestyle and coping mechanisms, so the extra mental load of training maintenance, packing dog gear for outings, being addressed by strangers regularly, and needing to advocate for a dog would actually end up being a net negative for my quality of life.

All this is to say: You can be disabled and a service dog can be life changing. You can also be disabled and enjoy training dogs and playing dogsports and have absolutely no interest in or need for a service dog. Both can be true!

A person can go from no symptoms at all to being profoundly debilitated all in one day.

Some have baseline symptoms so low and flares so high, that things can go from 1 to 10 very quickly.

so naturally, everyone reblogged with the same image on repeat (and we all thanked god for tumblr collapsing huge posts), and very quickly Pave (which was collectively decided to be his name and was pronounced "par-vay" and not "payve", as you'd expect) became the shorthand for both expressing enthusiasm about surgeries/medical procedures, AND used in light-hearted posts griping about post-recovery.

he became particularly big in the trans community after an incident where a user made a vent post about post-op pain after she'd had cosmetic gender-affirming surgery, and some fuck-ass terf decided it was their job to criticise her for "complaining about an elective surgery" (with a whole load of other bullshit besides). someone else reblogged and added pave as a shorthand to express their sympathy to the user for her pain (of both the surgery AND bc some fuckhead decided to bullshit on her post).

apparently though the terf hadn't encountered the meme before and fucking ERUPTED, with a bonkers reply accusing the other user of threatening them and abt how they feared for their life (which. they hadn't done anything else? just the meme), like copy-pasta level of ridiculous.

so naturally, everyone started reblogging with pave, and editing him to be progressively more uh

which eventually had the terf deactivating lmao. at this point people were now defaulting to using crunchy trans rights pave, who was now operating as a short hand for wishing someone support or luck, and Also to signal terfs to stay the fuck away.

pave kept being edited pretty relentlessly, but everyone would just adapt and use the newest edit. at one point they gave her big unnaturals!

i think by the end of my dream she looked something like this

I have a friend I know from when we were both 6. She is the only person living nearby and so she saw me go from walking through limping to wheelchair on a daily basis. I keep her updated on my health even tho we rarely hang out anymore. She was gonna come over yesterday and I had to cancel. She asked if I can’t hang out later that day. When I said i won’t feel better later, that if I feel that bad in the morning later will only get worse she got annoyed and “joked” that I’m just finding excuses. And I was surprised, she knows all about me being disabled after all? So, a bit taken aback, I told her it’s a normal thing for me.

“But you got the diagnosis now, aren’t you better?? I thought you’ll get better now”

My OH gets upset sometimes because I try to not talk about being sick to their parents and I rarely take up their parents’ offers of help, but it just involves so much ongoing Not Getting It that it uses far more spoons than it could ever save.

We travelled a long way to their cousin’s wedding a few months ago and the hotel turned out to be monumentally inaccessible, and it was made *so* much worse by them not getting that after a nine-hour drive and then the lift being broken and the receptionist being *horrible* and forcing me to crawl up the stairs on my hands and knees, that no, I was physically incapable of going out for dinner and was in fact barely restraining myself from weeping in pain and fatigue. And we’ve been married for more than 15 years; they’ve seen me the entire time I’ve been sick.

And I’ve had total crashes in front of them before, and it was awful, and they were incredibly worried and upset about it, and I had to use spoons I really didn’t have to explain it all, and in the end they seemed to get it.

But it doesn’t *stick*. It all resets.

So that after a couple of months it’s as though it never happened.

It’s like living in Groundhog Day.

Healthy people are just, apparently, incapable of processing the idea that *this is our lives*, and no, we can’t turn it off for fun or to make their lives easier, and resting in advance or getting a good night’s sleep doesn’t solve it. It’s what we live with constantly, and it really does suck on its own, but the constant lack of getting it and blaming from healthy people really does make it so, so much worse.

You are allowed to leave early

You are allowed to cancel plans

You are allowed to say no

You are allowed to do whatever you need to do for your health and wellbeing

Get the mobility aid

Get the shower chair

You should get and do whatever helps