Reminders to my future self

Literally everyone will ask if you broke your leg(s). Everyone. Even people you don’t know. Theyll ask a lot and think you’re extremely fragile.

bruises show up within the first day of rolling around, and they can really suck

people will try to grab your chair if they think you’re struggling and it can be hard not to snap at them for it

static electricity is a huge issue. You will probably either continuously shock your leg when you’re rolling around or do what I did today and zap someone so hard as you pass that both of you nearly keel over

people will call you out as a faker if you do anything even remotely fun ever on your wheelchair. Wheelies? Obviously your legs are fine lol not like you have to go down fucking curbs /s

puddles are the worst and if there’s a curb with a puddle all around and you have some ability to walk its a better idea to just stand up and navigate the chair than to fall backwards into said puddle

weird looks from people are inevitable, especially from people who don’t like you

bus drivers will often push your chair and give you advise you don’t want to hear, even if you tell them nicely you can push yourself. Its really hard not to get mad at them for it

no wheelies in school. Though if you do it in the elevator when no one else is with you you can’t really get caught.

speaking of wheelies, always be ready to throw at least one arm behind you in case you fall. They say tuck your chin in but its easier and more reliable to throw your hands back and keep your neck up so you don’t hit the floor. Sore arms are way easier to put up with than head injuries

don’t even bother to try and roll back up curbs. You will either be there for an hour or fall backwards. I managed to do both.

90% of classrooms that aren’t special ed are not very wheelchair accessible.

people will automatically assume you’re faking something if you’re not considered dumb enough in their standards to fit in with disabled students (aka high class ableism at its finest)

people are going to give you weird looks if you don’t suddenly start sitting with the other disabled kids

standard backpacks usually dangle way too much to keep on you easily, so try to pack light

built in storage on wheelchairs cannot sufficiently carry books

don’t try to hold an umbrella. Period. Especially not with your teeth. It doesn’t work.

don’t try to give the bus driver your ticket while you’re stuck on the ramp. And speaking of, its easy to start falling down the bus ramp so be careful, and when in doubt throw on the breaks

and finally if you’re like me pray to god you don’t go nonverbal when someone is trying to push you and you don’t want them to because it is hard to get them to stop if you can’t speak

So there’s a known thing in the study of human psychology/sociology/what-have-you where men are known to, on average, rely entirely on their female romantic partner for emotional support. Bonding with other men is done at a more superficial level involving fun group activities and conversations about general subjects but rarely involves actually leaning on other men or being really honest about emotional problems. Men use alcohol to be able to lower their inhibitions enough to expose themselves emotionally to other men, but if you can’t get emotional support unless you’re drunk, you have a problem.

So men need to have a woman in their lives to have anyone they can share their emotional needs and vulnerabilities with. However, since women are not socialized to fear sharing these things, women’s friendships with other women are heavily based on emotional support. If you can’t lean on her when you’re weak, she’s not your friend. To women, what friendship is is someone who listens to all your problems and keeps you company.

So this disconnect men are suffering from is that they think that only a person who is having sex with you will share their emotions and expect support. That’s what a romantic partner does. But women think that’s what a friend does. So women do it for their romantic partners and their friends and expect a male friend to do it for them the same as a female friend would. This fools the male friend into thinking there must be something romantic there when there is not.

This here is an example of patriarchy hurting everyone. Women have a much healthier approach to emotional support – they don’t die when widowed at nearly the rate that widowers die and they don’t suffer emotionally from divorce nearly as much even though they suffer much more financially, and this is because women don’t put all their emotional needs on one person. Women have a support network of other women. But men are trained to never share their emotions except with their wife or girlfriend, because that isn’t manly. So when she dies or leaves them, they have no one to turn to to help with the grief, causing higher rates of death, depression, alcoholism and general awfulness upon losing a romantic partner. 

So men suffer terribly from being trained in this way. But women suffer in that they can’t reach out to male friends for basic friendship. I am not sure any man can comprehend how heartbreaking it is to realize that a guy you thought was your friend was really just trying to get into your pants. Friendship is real. It’s emotional, it’s important to us. We lean on our friends. Knowing that your friend was secretly seething with resentment when you were opening up to him and sharing your problems because he felt like he shouldn’t have to do that kind of emotional work for anyone not having sex with him, and he felt used by you for that reason, is horrible. And the fact that men can’t share emotional needs with other men means that lots of men who can’t get a girlfriend end up turning into horrible misogynistic people who think the world owes them the love of a woman, like it’s a commodity… because no one will die without sex. Masturbation exists. But people will die or suffer deep emotional trauma from having no one they can lean on emotionally. And men who are suffering deep emotional trauma, and have been trained to channel their personal trauma into rage because they can’t share it, become mass shooters, or rapists, or simply horrible misogynists.

As some of you may or may not know I work in a Jewish hospital that provides rehabilitation and palliative care, and we were provided w this booklet regarding care for holocaust survivors and family members

Ten Thoughtful Commandments of Caring for Holocaust Survivors

but then they did an episode where they established that even just fucking laying there for a half hour, not even sleeping just laying there and not even for an hour, makes a significant difference and you’ll feel way better

by Catherine Woodiwiss

1. Trauma permanently changes us.

This is the big, scary truth about trauma: there is no such thing as “getting over it.” The five stages of grief model marks universal stages in learning to accept loss, but the reality is in fact much bigger: a major life disruption leaves a new normal in its wake. There is no “back to the old me.” You are different now, full stop.

This is not a wholly negative thing. Healing from trauma can also mean finding new strength and joy. The goal of healing is not a papering-over of changes in an effort to preserve or present things as normal. It is to acknowledge and wear your new life — warts, wisdom, and all — with courage.

2.  Presence is always better than distance.

There is a curious illusion that in times of crisis people “need space.” I don’t know where this assumption originated, but in my experience it is almost always false. Trauma is a disfiguring, lonely time even when surrounded in love; to suffer through trauma alone is unbearable. Do not assume others are reaching out, showing up, or covering all the bases.

It is a much lighter burden to say, “Thanks for your love, but please go away,” than to say, “I was hurting and no one cared for me.” If someone says they need space, respect that. Otherwise, err on the side of presence.

3.  Healing is seasonal, not linear.

It is true that healing happens with time. But in the recovery wilderness, emotional healing looks less like a line and more like a wobbly figure-8. It’s perfectly common to get stuck in one stage for months, only to jump to another end entirely … only to find yourself back in the same old mud again next year.

Recovery lasts a long, long time. Expect seasons.

4.  Surviving trauma takes “firefighters” and “builders.” Very few people are both.

This is a tough one. In times of crisis, we want our family, partner, or dearest friends to be everything for us. But surviving trauma requires at least two types of people: the crisis team — those friends who can drop everything and jump into the fray by your side, and the reconstruction crew — those whose calm, steady care will help nudge you out the door into regaining your footing in the world. In my experience, it is extremely rare for any individual to be both a firefighter and a builder. This is one reason why trauma is a lonely experience. Even if you share suffering with others, no one else will be able to fully walk the road with you the whole way.

A hard lesson of trauma is learning to forgive and love your partner, best friend, or family even when they fail at one of these roles. Conversely, one of the deepest joys is finding both kinds of companions beside you on the journey.

5.  Grieving is social, and so is healing.

For as private a pain as trauma is, for all the healing that time and self-work will bring, we are wired for contact. Just as relationships can hurt us most deeply, it is only through relationship that we can be most fully healed.

It’s not easy to know what this looks like — can I trust casual acquaintances with my hurt? If my family is the source of trauma, can they also be the source of healing? How long until this friend walks away? Does communal prayer help or trivialize?

Seeking out shelter in one another requires tremendous courage, but it is a matter of life or paralysis. One way to start is to practice giving shelter to others.

6.  Do not offer platitudes or comparisons. Do not, do not, do not.

“I’m so sorry you lost your son, we lost our dog last year … ” “At least it’s not as bad as … ” “You’ll be stronger when this is over.” “God works in all things for good!”

When a loved one is suffering, we want to comfort them. We offer assurances like the ones above when we don’t know what else to say. But from the inside, these often sting as clueless, careless, or just plain false.

Trauma is terrible. What we need in the aftermath is a friend who can swallow her own discomfort and fear, sit beside us, and just let it be terrible for a while.

7.  Allow those suffering to tell their own stories.

Of course, someone who has suffered trauma may say, “This made me stronger,” or “I’m lucky it’s only (x) and not (z).” That is their prerogative. There is an enormous gulf between having someone else thrust his unsolicited or misapplied silver linings onto you, and discovering hope for one’s self. The story may ultimately sound very much like “God works in all things for good,” but there will be a galaxy of disfigurement and longing and disorientation in that confession. Give the person struggling through trauma the dignity of discovering and owning for himself where, and if, hope endures.

8.  Love shows up in unexpected ways.

This is a mystifying pattern after trauma, particularly for those in broad community: some near-strangers reach out, some close friends fumble to express care. It’s natural for us to weight expressions of love differently: a Hallmark card, while unsatisfying if received from a dear friend, can be deeply touching coming from an old acquaintance.

Ultimately every gesture of love, regardless of the sender, becomes a step along the way to healing. If there are beatitudes for trauma, I’d say the first is, “Blessed are those who give love to anyone in times of hurt, regardless of how recently they’ve talked or awkwardly reconnected or visited cross-country or ignored each other on the metro.” It may not look like what you’d request or expect, but there will be days when surprise love will be the sweetest.

9.  Whatever doesn’t kill you …

In 2011, after a publically humiliating year, comedian Conan O’Brien gave students at Dartmouth College the following warning:

“Nietzsche famously said, ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ … What he failed to stress is that it almost kills you.” Odd things show up after a serious loss and creep into every corner of life: insatiable anxiety in places that used to bring you joy, detachment or frustration towards your closest companions, a deep distrust of love or presence or vulnerability.

There will be days when you feel like a quivering, cowardly shell of yourself, when despair yawns as a terrible chasm, when fear paralyzes any chance for pleasure. This is just a fight that has to be won, over and over and over again.

10.  … Doesn’t kill you.

Living through trauma may teach you resilience. It may help sustain you and others in times of crisis down the road. It may prompt humility. It may make for deeper seasons of joy. It may even make you stronger.

It also may not.

You see someone suffering, you feel like you ought to help, but you don’t want to help, and therefore you are compelled to insist that they’re not suffering, or punish them for making you feel guilty, or paint them as a villain.

Examples include laws that outlaw being homeless in public, outlaw doing things that primarily poor people need to do to survive, make it hard for abused children to emancipate themselves, etc. 

Also, social norms that make it okay to be mean to people just for being unhappy or lonely or frustrated in your presence.

In my book it’s not necessarily obligatory to help every suffering person.  But it is important to not punish them out of spite.  If you’re not going to help, at least don’t harm.  This is hard for me sometimes, but it’s important. You have to be okay with somebody being upset or unfortunate in your presence; like, “yes, you’re unhappy, and there’s no way I’m going to fix that (either I can’t or I’m not willing to), but I’m not going to add to the problem by being mean to you.”

i am not god; i sometimes think about how much doesn’t have to exist, myself included. it’s a problem i find a lot. i don’t feel necessary.

but then, neither is my dog. he is a sheepdog with no sheep. he has nightmares a lot. his purpose is moot.

one of my cats only eats bugs. he won’t catch mice. for an obligate carnivore, he loves moths.

is it required that i or you or anyone else exists. maybe not. but i kind of think of it as a small miracle. you do exist. despite how scientifically improbable it was for you to be created, you were. and something in that is beautiful, you know? the universe needed eyes to watch all these unnecessary things it created. you don’t spend hours on your sim house just to put no people in it. does a house require people to exist? no. but it does require people to be a home.

i know the world demands you Fulfill Thine Divine Purpose. i think that’s kind of bogus. you don’t have to be useful or valuable or exceptional to be worth something. my dog is worth so much to me. the idea that he’s not necessary is silly to me.

yes, i know. life goes on when people leave. true, and true indeed. i think about that a lot. but i also know that my sister’s cat goes to check to see if she’s home every night, and she’s been gone for months. 

grand scheme? who knows. but the truth is that other people need you because you help them feel like they exist with purpose. maybe you haven’t met the right people yet. i felt strongly in senior year of high school that nothing i did mattered - after all, i had no friends. i was bullied. if i died, it would make zero difference. and maybe it would have. maybe the gap would have filled after me. maybe my cat would learn that i was gone, that nobody was coming. maybe my mom would foster a new daughter. who knows. i’m not god.

but i do know if i didn’t exist. if i had taken myself off the table because i didn’t have to exist…. i wouldn’t be here talking to you and all of my new friends here. i wouldn’t tell you that, since you’re here, you might as well enjoy the rest of the things that shouldn’t exist. televisions are sound and image boxes. music and art and dance and writing don’t have to exist, but they do because they bring us joy, fill us with harmony. airplanes are godless flight machines and if god wanted us off the ground he would have given us wings.

airplanes were someone saying “this doesn’t have to exist, but i want it to.”  and i want you to exist because it’s worth it. it’s worth it for the dog you might adopt or the tattoo you might get or skinny dipping or writing songs or planting a garden. all things in life that won’t exist without you, that won’t happen without you around to make them happen. that need you to exist so they can exist too. 

please stay on this earth. i can’t force you, i can’t offer you a promise that the world ever stops hurting. but i can say that somewhere, to someone, you matter. and you matter to me, because you exist, because you reached out to me, because you have a question that i ask myself daily. 

uh i’ve moved every five or so years my whole life and honestly i just wing it.

don’t worry too much about following Rules and think more about what you want and how to get it. though, keep an eye out for danger signs: people who don’t respect your boundaries, living places with mold and bugs, any kinds of fees aplied to anything by anyone, especially landlords.

read all contracts closely. take extensive photo documentation of the condition of any place you move in to and upload it to a safe google doc. watch out for people who get angry a lot, or who are still complaining about wrongs dealt to them years ago. their dysfunctions will pull you down with them if you get too attached. and don’t lend anyone anything you’re not prepared to lose.

make friends. the number one survival tool for a human is other humans. don’t let your romantic partner be your whole world. join clubs, take classes, meet your neighbors. you don’t have to find yourself a close knit superhero team that would die for eachother, but you should have someone to go to the movies with.

You’ve been receiving benefits for a couple of years, and your regular “review” came and went. They probably made you fill out that dehumanizing form about what you are and aren’t able to do (which you need to answer as if you’re talking about your worst days; you’ll probably feel like you’re exaggerating if you do it right), and maybe they made you see one of the horrible state-paid doctors that are likely to minimize your disability, trick you into hurting your own case, and lie about what you said.

You hoped it was all over, but the letter came back saying that “your health has improved” and you are no longer disabled. You want to laugh - because your health has probably only declined - and cry, and scream, and you probably have thoughts of ending it all.

Don’t lose hope. You have a good chance of getting back on it. But you need to act now.

Before you do anything else, bring the letter to your local Social Security office and request an appeal. Check the box that says you want to stay on benefits while your appeal is processed. You must do this within 10 days of when they think you received the letter (which is probably earlier than when you actually received it). If the office is open when you get the letter, go now. If not, go the next business day. You cannot afford to put this off.

Give them the names and contact information of any medical providers you have seen since you filled out the disability review paperwork. Save a copy of all the paperwork from this visit in case they claim to have lost it.

The next step is to go to your local independent living center and ask for advice on your case. They may be able to recommend doctors and lawyers to help you win.

If there isn’t one in your area, or if they can’t recommend a lawyer, look for a disability lawyer here or contact your local legal aid.

From now on, your full-time job is winning your appeal. (I know you’re on disability because you can’t actually work a full-time job; that’s why this system ends up killing so many people. I hope you have friends or family to help you through this process.)

Go to as many appointments with doctors, psychologists, physical therapists, and whatever other medical providers apply in your case, as you can handle. Make sure to save their contact information, and whenever you go to a new one, go to the Social Security office and update your paperwork with their information.

Stay in regular contact with your caseworker at the state disability determination office; their name should be printed on the denial letter you got. Ask them if they need more information. Being in contact with them might actually convince them not to “oops, mysteriously lose” your paperwork or mix you up with someone else (yes, this does actually happen).

If you’re lucky, you won’t have to go to a hearing at all, and they’ll reinstate you after a reconsideration. If you’re not so lucky, you’ll have to go through several stages of hearings. The odds are in your favor at these hearings. Don’t lose hope. They need to prove that you have medically improved enough to go back to work, which you haven’t.

Yay, you’ve been reinstated! What do you do now? Well, this has probably caused a hiccup in your Medicare. Even though you checked the box that said you wanted to continue your benefits, something probably got screwed up. If you’re on SSI, they’re probably deducting the Medicare premiums from the months you were considered “not disabled” from your checks even though SSI recipients are supposed to have their Medicare paid for. Your state SSI supplement might also be screwed up. Your Social Security office will tell you who you need to call/visit to expedite this being straightened out. Medicare may also have refused to cover doctors’ visits from the time you were considered “not disabled” and you’ll have to call or write them to appeal that.

Adopt don’t shop is a catchy phase but it’s ultimately based on uneducated claims and simplifying a much more complex issue. There’s a range of reasons why adopting from animal shelter’s isn’t always the best course for some people.

I’ve worked in an animal shelter for 3 years now. And I am all for adoption and encouraging people to adopt. But there are valid reasons why adoption isn’t always the right option.

Firstly allergies. There are specific dog breeds that are bred  to  be hypoallergenic for people with moderate  to severe allergies. Most people will just say in response “why not just find a  hypoallergenic dog in the shelter then!” This is unrealistic. As someone who has worked in a shelter, I’ve never seen a  hypoallergenic dog there. Most of the dog breeds are unknown or mixed breed.  Hypoallergenic are expensive too, so it’s unlikely they’ll end up in shelters. And if they do they’d be high-demand dogs who would be easily adopted within days.

Breeds for specific purposes. Some people need certain breeds of dogs for certain specific reasons (be it allergies, illness, assisting with a disability, family friendly, working dog) ect. Certain breeds have been bred to assist with very specific purposes and expecting to find these breeds in shelters is unrealistic

It ignores the importance of good breeders and rescues working together. Breeders can offer valuable resources such as finances, kennel space, networking or knowledge  Shaming and alienating proper breeders does nothing to help animal shelters or the animals people claim to care about

Proper breeders are actually beginning to breed more healthier dogs (that often have a range of health issues due to inproper breeding). Such as with brachycephalic breeds like pugs. 

Not everyone is prepared / experienced enough to deal with shelter dogs. Not all shelter dogs have issues, most of them are just lonely or scared. But there are also of dogs (and cats) that require extra care and patience. And you just never know with a shelter animal. Most of the time the history of the animals are unknown. You might not know how the animal will react around children, or around other pets. Not everyone can accommodate for the needs of these animals. That’s why so many animals adopted from shelters end up getting returned weeks or even days later! And this can really mess the animal up even more so.