My disability does stop me and It's not a choice.

I see it everywhere from all sorts of disabled people.

“I don’t let it get in my way”

“I don’t let it stop me”

“Disabled folks can do whatever they want in life”

& it’s aggravating to me; you don’t choose how your disability disables you.  I feel like these statements come from high functioning disabled people who are still able to go outside regularly, work full time jobs, exercise heavily and have a relatively high quality of life and more or less do the same things able bodied people do.

If a disability is severe enough it does whatever the hell it pleases it doesn’t give a damn what plans you have for the day, the week, or your whole life. It's ruthless.

 Please believe me when I say I’ve heard stories of people struggling and in fear of not being able to make it through their own weddings, family graduations and other important events. 

 Please believe me when I say that there are millions of disabled people who have had to completely and utterly change their plans for life because the illness/disability has such a strong dictatorship that it’s more like they’re in the passenger seat of their own life. When it’s severe enough you can’t do what you want! You have to do what your illness needs first and foremost. After a certain level of disability It’s.Needs.Come.First. & you have no say in it.  People have had to quit their careers and lively hoods, or maybe they were so young they never even got to start them, people have had to drop out of college or all together not even be able to go. 

 & we have all heard the stories of caretakers & nurses being abusive and even killing their disabled dependent, family member, spouse or what have you. Do you think those people “let” it stop them? Don’t you think if they could take care of themselves financially and throughout daily life they’d get the hell out of there? & let’s not forget people who aren’t able to work, have nowhere to go and end up being homeless due to their disabilities. Do you honestly think any human being would willingly stay in a situation like that?

A disability DISABLES you. What happens when you disable your Wi-Fi? It stops functioning, that’s what happens to us. If you’re high functioning enough to live independently and follow a full time career that’s great and I’m not invalidating your struggles whatsoever nor am I trying to say  “It could be worse” I’m just trying to say if you say things like “I don’t let it stop me”  understand it’s a simple matter of privilege. Your body functions closely enough to that of an able person in one way or the other that you’re able to at least partially enjoy their world. It has nothing to do with “letting” it stop you.

 It’s not a lack of willpower; it’s not a “bad attitude”. 

I remember coming across this infuriating article on a HF disabled woman saying “It’s like they believe disabled people are no more active than houseplants” Newsflash! Have you heard of the word bed bound? I haaaaate that comparison to a plant but there are people who literally cannot get out of their beds or their houses and they do.not.choose. that life!!! & she went on to describe an amputee going through daily life like, going to work, dropping off her kids at school then coming back to exercise and saying (to an able bodied audience) “does that seem any harder to you?”   Like wow, not every disabled person is capable of even ONE doing those things???   It’s like they were trying to make it as if there is no difference between the disabled life and the abled life when in some cases they're polar opposites. I’ve even had a personal experience between me, another LF and one HF person with the same illness and the HF person was accusing both of us of “letting” it stop us, assuming we weren’t on medication or trying any treatments when we were. No illness has a one size fits all journey. Thinking like this completely ignores those who need accommodations and services in order to be included even partially, it furthers the oppression of the ones that are deemed too disabled to be accommodated by ADA jobs and have to live on either nothing or a monthly check below minimum wage.  

 Saying we’re the same as abled people is not the way to equality. Embracing similarity AND difference is the way to equality. It’s great to prove disabled people are more similar to abled people than society thinks in the sense that we are people first and want/are interested in the same things as able bodied people are but we are different than them and that’s okay. It’s okay to be different!!

HF Please stop saying you don’t “let” it stop you, because your making LF disabled people seem like we choose to watch our dreams shatter right before our eyes, to be left out of various life milestones and day to day events & worst of all this type of thinking makes it seem like we lack willpower and choose to be dependent “burdens” on our families, our spouses, our friends and society as a whole. This type of thinking is what makes society think its okay to think about cutting crucial services like SSI/SSDI and it’s what makes people think you’re a “saint” for befriending, dating, or being the parent/caretaker of a disabled person when no one should be applauded for loving another human being. 

Please believe me when I say, my disability does stop me and it’s not because I “let” it.