Monday, August 06, 2007
About that disability
If I remember back to about 1997 or 1998, trying to take a ferry to Vancouver Island, my grandson in a stroller, hiking it from the overflow parking lot to the ferry terminal, inflaming my arthritic hip so badly that all I could do during my “vacation time” was to lie on the sofa and take painkillers, and try to hobble around after my grandson to supervise him. At that point, a friend of mine suggested that I apply for a handicap sticker for my car because, “after all, that’s who they were meant for.” He meant well, but the effect was like having a glass of cold water in the face; it never occurred to me to take on the label of “disabled.” First of all, my experience with labels were that they were thrust upon people, as unwanted mantles to be worn, the seeds of racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism - you name the “ism”, someone will find a way to invent one and use it as a weapon. Second, I didn’t feel “dis” anything. I had a job, I was raising my grandson, I was paying taxes - all those things that made me a functioning member of society. The two concepts didn’t emotionally go hand-in-hand, although intellectually I knew the difference - I worked in an agency that advocated for legal rights of those who’d been wronged.
Walking the Pride Parade route this weekend made me realize that if I don’t take care of my other hip, it will soon go, too; I had to get out my handicap sticker today to cope with a not-so-big box parking lot. But at least my disability is well-defined, unlike the late 1990s when life stressed my system into food sensitivities that gave me an array of symptoms that were confused for fybromyalgia. Having a disability as amorphous as fibromyalgia or other less-understood chronic illnesses does tend to bring out the whacky comments, though, from people who “know.” Chronic Holiday is a wry look at some of the things that people with disabilities get to hear, ad nauseum.