#maxmeows

anyway. I remember the excitement of getting to enroll in a course taught by Lee Armstrong herself which taught the building, controlling, storytelling, and filming of puppets and puppetry. And I loved being in that class. But I also remember how much pain I was in during and after that class each day. And how frequently I had to take breaks or lie flat on the floor sometimes in the middle of class (which is something I still do now post-college as a language school student. When the pain is so bad sometimes all I can do is lie flat on the floor.) I had just recently been diagnosed with scoliosis at age 15, and had already known since a young age about my POTS and hEDS, and puppeteering is an incredibly physically intensive activity for those unaware. (You have to contort your body into unnatural positions to keep your head out of the camera shot, hold your arms above your head for extended periods of time, and if you have joint pain or hypermobility like me, then you'll have joint subluxations and fingers locking up, etc.) and I remember one day in puppetry class I was trying to explain my conditions to my classmates, about how I needed extra breaks and how I was often in pain, and I remember that particular day I was in a lot more pain than usual, and feeling particularly hopeless and frustrated about the fact that my pain held me back from doing the things I loved (art, puppetry) but what I remember the most clearly from that day was the response from one of my classmates. I presume she was a woman in her mid forties or early fifties, and her words hurt me more than the pain itself I was already enduring. She hit me with the classic line "You're too young for all that. Just wait until you're my age." And of course now things like that barely phase me at all because I've heard them so much, but I wonder if that was the first time someone had said that to me.

And I remember a completely different instance while I was still actively participating in the puppetry guild events, when we were set to make an appearance at a parade in which we'd be marching as a group down a road with various puppets, but the main, first and largest puppet of our section of the parade was this huge, near life-sized puppet of a horse's head and neck. I remember it was mounted on something like a chair or maybe some kind of wooden platform with wheels, and it required multiple people to push it from behind. And I remember one of the male puppetry guild members looking at me and saying "Max! This is perfect. You're a strong young man, why don't you help us push it from the back?" And I remember I felt my heart sink. At the time I couldn't fully explain and didn't fully understand why it hurt so much. But now I do. It was because I was consistently being perceived as an able-bodied cisgender male by those around me, and this man on that day had then also enforced the equation of masculinity with physical ability. And I was neither able-bodied nor a cisgender male, but I was terrified of letting anybody else know that, for fear of their reaction. For fear of what judgemental or dismissive words they might say to me. And that day at the parade, I wasn't even sure if I could walk the whole length of the street without passing out from POTS, and I knew for sure if they had me in charge of pushing that heavy platform, there was no way I'd be able to make it more than halfway through the street, and it would result in subluxations and burning aching pain for the next few days. But they didn't know that. Because this was the time when my physical disabilities and pain were largely invisible to others, due to my lack of mobility aids. I remember always feeling as though others would never believe me and my pain or my limitations because I was "too young" or "looked healthy" but I think somehow, I was able to explain myself to some degree that day, and somehow, that man was able to understand me to some degree. Because he immediately switched the plan and granted me the privilege of being the one to sit on the chair and puppeteer the horse's head, while the other puppeteers pushed me from the back.