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God bless my mother, but she is crazy. I told her I wanted to live in Albany, Georgia, so what does she send me? Listings for Franklin, North Carolina, Blairsville, Georgia, and Gainesville, Georgia, all of which are within driving distance from her and several hundred miles north of where I want to look.
I do not want to live near her. I lived with her for eighteen years, and the emotional damage and damage to my self-confidence was incalculable. At twenty-nine, I am incapable of establishing healthy, meaningful, emotionally-intimate relationships with people of either gender because I am convinced that if my mother-who birthed me and claimed to know me better than anyone else-cannot accept me as I am, no one can. To be subjected to her constant "tough love" would be akin to putting a Glock in my mouth and pulling the trigger.
For someone who claims to know me and what I need so well, she is astonishingly oblivious to how I live my life and what I need to function happily and productively. She has sent me listings with exceedingly narrow doors and halls so cramped that it would be impossible to maneuver my manual through them, much less my electric wheelchair. This is not an attendant who is just being assigned to me. This is my mother, who wiped my ass for eighteen years. That she does not see these things boggles my mind, and I'm not sure if it's simple overexuberance or another attempt among many to pretend that I'm not disabled, that if she makes things unpleasant enough, I'll give up the charade and walk like "normal" people.
In a related vein, I received a review of SLS from a fellow limper, and it brought me up short. In it, she said the following:
I found this story through BBC's Ouch forum. I am particularly impressed and strenghtened by your portrayal of Rebecca. I'm reviewing now because it's quite exhausting to read, since I recognise so much about Rebecca, and her view of disability, in myself. I am a non-wheelchair bound sufferer of CP, even though I prize myself for being so 'good' I can pass for a non-disabled person is a better description. Yes, I am proud of it, and yes, I am ashamed of being proud of that.
The bolding is mine. When I read that, my initial instinct was to punch her in the face and thwap her with my keyboard. I was angry that she considered herself above the rest of us disabled folks, as if we were the hideous product of incest hidden in the basement during family get-togethers and never discussed. I was angry that she felt superior because she could pass.
And I got even angrier when after admitting that she could and did pass, she tried to claim my hardships and the hardships of others as her own, tried to claim a kinship, a sisterhood with me.
No, no, no. If you spend your whole life hiding and denying who you are and enjoying the benefits brought by such denial, then you have no right to come to my table and tell me you know how it feels. No, you fucking don't. You're afraid to know how it feels, and that's why you hide. Until you have had people tell you to your face that your life matters less than an abled person, you don't know how I feel.
Until you've sat in the student disability center and listened to hysterical voicemails from furious parents demanding that you be kept far away from their normal child, you don't know how I feel.
Until you've read newspaper articles wherein boneheaded school officials insinuate that disabled students should expect to be left behind in a fire if it is for the greater good of the other students, you don't know how I feel.
Until your prospective mother-in-law tells you that her son enjoys masturbation more than sex with you, you don't know how I feel.
Until your own mother tells you you're going to die alone because no man will ever look beyond your physical impairment, you don't know how I feel.
So, you pass. You also fucking fail. Not for passing; the sordid truth is, I'd pass, too, if I could. But I would never, ever flaunt the fact that I denied who I was and in the same breath claim sorority with my fellows who could or would not.
So, fuck you. Fuck you, fuck you. You're not a warrior. You're a snivelling, gutless pussy. Go peddle your silently-suffering martyr complex somewhere else.
The rest of the review can be found here:
The Review
I do not want to live near her. I lived with her for eighteen years, and the emotional damage and damage to my self-confidence was incalculable. At twenty-nine, I am incapable of establishing healthy, meaningful, emotionally-intimate relationships with people of either gender because I am convinced that if my mother-who birthed me and claimed to know me better than anyone else-cannot accept me as I am, no one can. To be subjected to her constant "tough love" would be akin to putting a Glock in my mouth and pulling the trigger.
For someone who claims to know me and what I need so well, she is astonishingly oblivious to how I live my life and what I need to function happily and productively. She has sent me listings with exceedingly narrow doors and halls so cramped that it would be impossible to maneuver my manual through them, much less my electric wheelchair. This is not an attendant who is just being assigned to me. This is my mother, who wiped my ass for eighteen years. That she does not see these things boggles my mind, and I'm not sure if it's simple overexuberance or another attempt among many to pretend that I'm not disabled, that if she makes things unpleasant enough, I'll give up the charade and walk like "normal" people.
In a related vein, I received a review of SLS from a fellow limper, and it brought me up short. In it, she said the following:
I found this story through BBC's Ouch forum. I am particularly impressed and strenghtened by your portrayal of Rebecca. I'm reviewing now because it's quite exhausting to read, since I recognise so much about Rebecca, and her view of disability, in myself. I am a non-wheelchair bound sufferer of CP, even though I prize myself for being so 'good' I can pass for a non-disabled person is a better description. Yes, I am proud of it, and yes, I am ashamed of being proud of that.
The bolding is mine. When I read that, my initial instinct was to punch her in the face and thwap her with my keyboard. I was angry that she considered herself above the rest of us disabled folks, as if we were the hideous product of incest hidden in the basement during family get-togethers and never discussed. I was angry that she felt superior because she could pass.
And I got even angrier when after admitting that she could and did pass, she tried to claim my hardships and the hardships of others as her own, tried to claim a kinship, a sisterhood with me.
No, no, no. If you spend your whole life hiding and denying who you are and enjoying the benefits brought by such denial, then you have no right to come to my table and tell me you know how it feels. No, you fucking don't. You're afraid to know how it feels, and that's why you hide. Until you have had people tell you to your face that your life matters less than an abled person, you don't know how I feel.
Until you've sat in the student disability center and listened to hysterical voicemails from furious parents demanding that you be kept far away from their normal child, you don't know how I feel.
Until you've read newspaper articles wherein boneheaded school officials insinuate that disabled students should expect to be left behind in a fire if it is for the greater good of the other students, you don't know how I feel.
Until your prospective mother-in-law tells you that her son enjoys masturbation more than sex with you, you don't know how I feel.
Until your own mother tells you you're going to die alone because no man will ever look beyond your physical impairment, you don't know how I feel.
So, you pass. You also fucking fail. Not for passing; the sordid truth is, I'd pass, too, if I could. But I would never, ever flaunt the fact that I denied who I was and in the same breath claim sorority with my fellows who could or would not.
So, fuck you. Fuck you, fuck you. You're not a warrior. You're a snivelling, gutless pussy. Go peddle your silently-suffering martyr complex somewhere else.
The rest of the review can be found here:
The Review
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