Squirrel Ponderings

Why? I know this is the question you want to ask. You are not allowed to ask it. I’m not sure why it’s frowned upon but you can’t.

You should name it after me. Not funny. No one laughs. A selfish statement that takes the attention off the pregnant party and shifts it to you. This joke is a flop, save it for the next pet they get.

The kid was picked up by an ambulance 30 minutes later.

Now as an adult working in security I get SO MANY folks- upper-middle aged mostly- coming to me to 'rat out' people they think are faking it.

I was once sent into a bathroom because a client demanded that the "fucker won't get out, so go drag them out"- I was NEVER going to do that, so I did a wellness check instead. You know who it was? A person recently released from the hospital after a car accident. They had a hole in their skull and major hearing loss. They couldn't answer the owner because they couldn't HEAR the owner.

Another time about a homeless man who got around town by kicking the ground from his wheelchair. "You know he doesn't actually need that thing, his legs work fine, it's just for pity points"- Oh, so he's not paralyzed, his wheelchair is performative? Funny story Dale, I actually know that guy, he was backed over by a truck and has chronic pain from his shattered pelvis. But sure, let's make him stand up and walk everywhere so nobody feels too bad for him and tries to help him or something.

"She doesn't need that scooter, I've seen her get out of it."

"Look how fat he is, because he just rides around and refuses to get up."

"She doesn't really need that cane- she comes here without it all the time"

i appreciate the question! as someone who has been chronically suicidal since childhood, i consider my suicidality to be part of my identity as a disabled/neurodivergent person. not everyone who is suicidal is disabled or considers it part of a disability, but for me that is the case.

preventionist framework views suicidality as a problem to be cured. medical models of suicidality view it as a medical emergency that requires immediate intervention (a whole other can of worms, as the “intervention” more often than not prioritizes compliance and order rather than actually helping someone suffer less). social models of suicidality view it as a gauge in which our society is succeeding or failing - if there are people in this world who want to die, surely there is something wrong with how the world operates. therefore, if we fix the problems with our society, there will no longer be people who want to die.

with both the medical and social models, the end goal is to eliminate suicidality, not honor that suicidal ideation can simply be a part of someone’s lived experience. this is problematic when we consider the long history of attempts to eliminate disability as a whole rather than accommodate and include disabled persons.

in addition, a lot of preventionist scripts on even a one-to-one conversational level aim to shut down the suicidal person instead of really listen to them. i go more in depth about this in this post, but there are a few common types of ways people respond to hearing a loved one is suicidal:

- decentering (e.g. “i / your family / your friends / etc. would be devastated if you died”)

- moral arguments (e.g. “suicide is selfish”)

- guilt trips, even if they’re unintentional (e.g. “who will take care of your pets if you die?”)

- deferring to someone perceived as more equipped (e.g. “are you seeing a therapist about this?”)

- involuntary hospitalization (e.g. calling or threatening to call 911)

a world without obligatory preventionism would allow suicidal people to be able to candidly speak about their lived experience without the fear of getting invalidated at best or placed under arrest with no due process at worst.

im trying to get on stimulants for my very debilitating adhd, and i have been told to not lie to psychiatrists, so i was honest when they asked if i still experience suicidal ideation. i told them i do still experience it, but it's tied to circumstance, so it's not constant and is usually just an extreme emotional response to suffering. they then used that to deny me medication, saying that "stimulants might motivate you TOO much, enough for you to actually take your life."

it doesn't make sense to me. i told them my suicidal ideation is linked to poor circumstances... so wouldn't improving my circumstances by medicating my disability that prevents me from making positive change in my life directly make me LESS suicidal? was this suicidism?

I would absolutely consider that suicidism. They are using your suicidality to deprive you of incredibly important medication.

GIRL THE EGG COLUMN IS NOT A GOOD IDEA. YOU DO NOT NEED CONVINCING YOU NEED CONVICTION.

you work 5 days a week for 8 hours at a very intense job with multiple skills required. you have 5 minutes to grab all of your very heavy tools and navigate to the opposite end of the building when you change shifts. you get a single 30 minute lunch. you have to exercise, regardless of illness, neurodivergence or disability for an hour and you don't get to choose what you do. you have hours of the same work to do at home. also if you fuck any of this up, or do it the wrong way, or stop showing up, you will be punished and your caretakers could go to jail.

maybe you have the choice to do this all at home. the only difference is that you don't have to transport as much. so you're stuck in one spot, alone, head down, working like you usually would otherwise.

completely inhumane, right? but sure, "kids these days are..." alive people who think and feel. you should not torture children.