Happy Disability Pride Month!
There’s this expectation of only showing your best days, because only then the society wants to listen to you and show you around. You hear so many stories of „i had an accident but i have a positive mindset in the end, so i won.”. I respect it, but that is often only a fraction of what really goes on.
So i invite you to talk about what you struggle with, that ties to your disability. You exist in a world that both made you and is not made for you. You deserve to share your bad experiences and be heard.
No idea if anybody will even interact with this post, but I’ll share some anecdotes and go first;
I’m Deaf/HoH and neurodivergent, born in a hearing family. My family refuses to acknowledge my life could be harder than an able-bodied person’s. I was always told to work twice as hard to be at least an average „normal” person. So i did. Despite kids screaming into my ears in kindergarten, despite bullying, despite being always an outcast because how dare i respond to what i heard and it turns out to have been something else (I can make out about every fifth word a person says, and that’s if i know their voice). I survived a completely optional surgery that was done against my will, forced by my parents to „fix me”. In the end it didn’t work and gave me nerve damage instead. Spent years recovering, while doctors constantly said that i must be faking it not working and just be afraid to show my scars.
In my adult life i’ve been denied promotions, constantly ridiculed, at some point i’ve been demoted because men working under me were offended that a disabled woman was ordering them around - they decided to lie to the higher-ups. I’ve been told that „disabled people should just adjust to the society” and there won’t be any problems. I’ve gotten jobs that in the end i learned they just gave me out of „pity”. Even now, at university, i get told to never say that my lectures are online, with auto-transcription, because it looks as if i have it easy. But i tried so hard, and i still struggle every day. My family refuses to learn sign language in fears of it diminishing my speaking abilities. I get bumped into, stepped on, yelled at on the daily - random pedestrians bump into me and ask me in a vicious tone „Are you fucking deaf?”. My able-bodied friends say they want to be allies, but they never make any adjustments, even with provided advice on how to do it. There’s a thousand more little things that happen every day, but who has the time to even be angry or mourn all of them. I developed autoimmune diseases and a mild form of breast cancer because i feel like if i don’t try to keep up with the world, despite being disabled - then my life is not worth living. And that’s not true - we’re allowed to live happy lives - it’s just that the society very often tells us not to, unless we excel - and even then it’s just „good for a disabled person”.
