Daily, we must survive one another: our assumptions, shortcomings, projections, internalized isms, and more. How do we survive each other and ALSO plot alternatives where we all live? This is the question that's been on my mind. I don't want us to survive one another and sometimes, it's the only way to understand how we can be better, work on behalf of something greater than our individual selves, something greater than the identities we hold close to us.
Last night, I send my dear friend Lia a voice memo that the wheelchair is finally in. That I cried after the technicians came and did the demo, that I was relieved and exhausted of another transition. I fell asleep for three hours while I cried. She replied today encouraging me to name the wheelchair; to imagine possibilities of rolling, cruising, moving, living, living, living.
The power wheelchair was prescribed in September. It Is now Dec. I am surviving the medical industrial complex but I'm not alone. I know many of you are too. Some of you may not have an official diagnosis nor access to doctors and you too are surviving a world that produces certain populations as surplus, or excess, or waste.
To be disabled in this world is to be a savvy, imaginative, and hyper-alive subject. To be disabled is to daily imagine ways of living outside ableism which is a threat to the modern capitalist world-system.
To my disabled kin out there: the loneliness is exponential.
I want to imagine something else with you; I commit to become a trickster, a fugitive, and to always speak my truth.
At times, I have felt like a bad friend, and unpresent presence and I want to linger with this feeling. Am I a bad friend and unpresent, or am I surviving and adapting? What does it mean to let go of shame? To talk about shame out loud? To incubate spaces where our friends, family members, and those around us can openly hold shame and move with, through and against it?
This power wheelchair means more freedom, independence, and a tool for my imagination.
