#actually crippled

Not so fun fact: my high schools policy for disabled fire evacuation was just to not

This needs to be talked about more, I’m sure my school wasn’t the only shitty one. We had no evac plans for our disabilities. We just had to stand next to the elevator and wait for help to come or for someone to call it drill and send us back, traumatised, to our classes.

When I moved to my college, they had to tell me what a personalised evacuation plan was. When we had a fire drill, my new teacher had to guide me out of the room as I shook in fear from the times we had sat upstairs on the third floor smelling smoke from a kitchen fire and not knowing how big that was or if someone was gonna come get us.

I was lucky, back then, that 2 sixteen year olds were in their last year, and had done this countless times before. They comforted me while I freaked out. That one was a drill. When there were fires, they were small and easily controlled, but when those came I was older, I comforted the younger students as we all stood there with the stench of burning filling our nostrils. Sometimes we’d move up the hall to the hallway balcony areas and lean over to see if the cafeteria was the culprit. We’d text friends outside asking for explanations, updates. Was it real, was it drill, where is the fire?

Sometimes I find myself beating myself up. Sometimes I say there was never any real threat, stop being dramatic.

but it feels disingenuous to describe yourself as "crippled by a psychological/neurodevelopmental disorder" while entirely avoiding calling yourself Physically Disabled.

the principles of cripplepunk specificies the exclusion of abled bodies and acknowledgement of the intersection between mental and physical disability.

it isn’t my body’s fault. i remind myself of that constantly.

it isn’t my body’s fault that the home i found in it feels more like a prison these days. so i try not to hate it. i try to cope and make jokes and pretend that it doesn’t sting when i can’t do things i used to be good at anymore, like ballet and basketball.