Content note: cancer, discussion of ableism
It took me a long time to be willing to call myself disabled. Longer than it should have, really. I kept finding reasons why it wasn’t true – I don’t use mobility aids (until I did); I’m not “officially” disabled (as though that matters – my chronic pain certainly doesn’t care that I don’t count as disabled under the Equality Act); I don’t want to presume to call myself disabled when other people are much more disabled than me (and yet, I’d furiously disagree with someone who told me I wasn’t queer enough). But that was all a veneer papering over the fact that I just didn’t want to be disabled.
I wanted to be like everyone else (but only in this one way). I didn’t want pity, or special treatment. I told myself lies about how I wasn’t different, that the things that were becoming difficult were things I didn’t want to do. But really, underneath, it was pure internalised ableism. Subconsciously, I thought of people with disabilities as being different from everyone else – and I wanted to be part of the everyone else. Ironic, really, since I’ve never wanted that in any other aspects of my life.
And then I got cancer. Which made all my other symptoms worse. And during the course of cancer treatment and the aftermath of that treatment, I was finally willing to accept that I am disabled.
I’m sure I would have reached that conclusion eventually: my conditions were only ever going to get worse, after all. But cancer definitely helped to speed up that realisation.
The root of my resistance to labelling myself disabled was that I didn’t think of it as a positive identity – unlike being queer, or non-binary, or mixed race, I didn’t see any positives in it; it seemed to be an identity consisting solely of losses. But of course, that’s the ableism talking.
I came across the social model of disability a while ago, which helped to clarify my thoughts about disability: it made so much sense! But I still didn’t feel comfortable using words like disabled to describe myself. I felt like I didn’t have the right to those words at the same time as not wanting to admit to myself that I was disabled. I felt like embracing the label of disabled would be giving up on the possibility of becoming “healthy” again – even though I knew full well that there was no chance of a cure. My dodgy joints will remain so, my chronic pain will never disappear. The best I can hope for is to minimise the effects of both.
I’m still not part of any disabled community, nor taking part in any activism, but maybe that will come in time. For right now, I am just accepting that part of myself, acknowledging its existence, and recognising that it’s okay, that I am still me, that this aspect of my identity is just another part of myself that I need to come to terms with.
Random Ramblings 