![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Roomie and I leave for St. Augustine tomorrow afternoon, and truth be told, part of me wishes we weren't. I'm very much a creature of routine, and any disruption, no matter how well-intended or festive, upsets me. I inevitably wind up with stomach problems and terrible anxiety the first night. I miss my bed and my stufties and my tea, and I spend every day of the disruption counting the hours until I am ensconced in my apartment again.
Part of it stems from my disability. The only place I am guaranteed an accessible bathroom is my own damn apartment, and nothing sucks harder than spending six hours doing a buttock clean-and-jerk so as to assure that the only Yule log at the Christmas party is the one on the buffet table. Add to that a hyperactive ten-year-old and a dog that barks itself into an aneurysm at my every twitch, and it's a recipe for spastic misery.
And really, I'm just not a people person. Most people are too loud and too jostling and too busy. They never stop to breathe or think or just be quiet. It's noise and chatter and smells and heat, and everybody's touching everybody but you, and in a crowded room, you're all by yourself. And you'd like to speak up, to say that you'd like to be touched bu somebody not wearing gloves, please. But it's a needy thing to say, so you don't, and besides, these aren't your people anyway, and never will be. So you say nothing and drink the punch that tastes like pee and gasoline and fruitcake and pray for the 26th to come as quickly as it can. When it does, you can go home, and at home, you can be anything you want to be because the keyboard you type on doesn't care that it's a lie.
Roomie is abuzz with excitement and has been for days, humming and bouncing on the balls of his feet and ambling from room to room. He says we'll have a good time at the beach, that he doesn't need any present but me. It's sweet, and his glee is temporarily infectious, but it never lasts.
When I was a freshman in college, I had a friend named Karen Kandler. She had severe CP-quadriplegic spasticity, slurred speech, and a constant head bob that made it look like she was grooving to Bob Marley inside her head. Her father had come with her to inspect the campus.
Her father and my mother were like night and day. Karen's father had spent his life including her, encouraging her, letting her know that nothing was impossible. He let her know that she was just as much the life of the party as anyone else. My mother had devoted her life to reminding me just what an unwelcome, unpleasant burden I was.
My mother has since apologized for saying those things. She says she was sick and mentally unstable. But some things you can never unsay, and though it's been ten years since I've seen Karen, I still wish her father had been mine.
Part of it stems from my disability. The only place I am guaranteed an accessible bathroom is my own damn apartment, and nothing sucks harder than spending six hours doing a buttock clean-and-jerk so as to assure that the only Yule log at the Christmas party is the one on the buffet table. Add to that a hyperactive ten-year-old and a dog that barks itself into an aneurysm at my every twitch, and it's a recipe for spastic misery.
And really, I'm just not a people person. Most people are too loud and too jostling and too busy. They never stop to breathe or think or just be quiet. It's noise and chatter and smells and heat, and everybody's touching everybody but you, and in a crowded room, you're all by yourself. And you'd like to speak up, to say that you'd like to be touched bu somebody not wearing gloves, please. But it's a needy thing to say, so you don't, and besides, these aren't your people anyway, and never will be. So you say nothing and drink the punch that tastes like pee and gasoline and fruitcake and pray for the 26th to come as quickly as it can. When it does, you can go home, and at home, you can be anything you want to be because the keyboard you type on doesn't care that it's a lie.
Roomie is abuzz with excitement and has been for days, humming and bouncing on the balls of his feet and ambling from room to room. He says we'll have a good time at the beach, that he doesn't need any present but me. It's sweet, and his glee is temporarily infectious, but it never lasts.
When I was a freshman in college, I had a friend named Karen Kandler. She had severe CP-quadriplegic spasticity, slurred speech, and a constant head bob that made it look like she was grooving to Bob Marley inside her head. Her father had come with her to inspect the campus.
Her father and my mother were like night and day. Karen's father had spent his life including her, encouraging her, letting her know that nothing was impossible. He let her know that she was just as much the life of the party as anyone else. My mother had devoted her life to reminding me just what an unwelcome, unpleasant burden I was.
My mother has since apologized for saying those things. She says she was sick and mentally unstable. But some things you can never unsay, and though it's been ten years since I've seen Karen, I still wish her father had been mine.
Tags: