fae/she/they

x <3 x

The shame of bad attendance and the idea that not Showing Up always makes you Unworthy

Schools go SO HARD on demanding perfect attendance and punishing periods of absence and illness, treating it as truancy, etc, demanding or expecting that you power through regardless of pain or physical consequences

And as an adult it is so hard to like. Let go of that

I am very purposefully self-employed in such a way where I heavily limit deadlines, physical expectations on my presence places, etc, and i build a lot of cushioning around my appearances to make sure my body can handle conventions and markets and that my recovery afterwards is smooth

But even as I do that for work I struggle so much to shake the like. Ingrained and scarified anxiety that if I don't show up every week to x activity or club or community, or if my communication is flaky and inconsistent during rougher periods, that everyone will be like. Mad or upset or cold

But that's literally never the case. I haven't been able to go to temple for nearly two months and when I finally got to go today lots of ppl were very pleased to see me and greeted me very warmly and were glad to see me back

And it's the same even when I go to like. Fucking bingo at the gay bar

And idk it's very frustrating when my body has been like. Forcibly and quite nastily taught this lesson that perfect or near attendance is Demanded, and once you're absent for more than a month you don't deserve to return

But actual human beings like. Never treat me that way. Bc that's not real.

A thing that's maddening about accessibility politics around stuff like chronic absence and inconsistency is that many schools and workplaces and government programmes effectively demand it for bureaucratic purposes - to keep track of statistics, to keep hold of relevant funding, etc

But like. Social spaces and community spaces - basically, everywhere you exist as a human being before or instead of existing as a number in a system, do not see it that way

take these tags, on somebody else's post (condolences pip)

the thing is. this is what i would call an inside thought. nobody would have known you didn't get it if you didn't tell them that. if you recognised that it was important but didn't have the headspace to process it, you can reblog without commentary for others, or to come back to later. or you can save it somewhere and wait until you DO have the capacity to read it over a few more times, ponder it, consider what it might mean, figure out how to understand it, and THEN reblog it

but no. rushing to reblog while it is still opaque. rushing to admit to ignorance rather than spend the time to achieve understanding. perhaps hoping that somebody will break it down for you more simply, though to my mind it was quite simply phrased in the first place. never stopping to take the time first

comprehension is not always instant! sometimes it takes a bit of time for something to percolate after you read it; sometimes you need to read it a few times; sometimes you realise you don't have the context for it and either go and get the context or accept that it's not for you right now