I was going to write all sorts of ranty and/or quasi-intellectual crap in honour of the International Day of People with Disabilities, which is just coming to a close here in Australia. Instead I think I'm going to force myself to say some hard things.
People often tell me they forget that I'm disabled when they meet me in person. I've written in here before about how I never forget, about how my mind gets to do jigsaw puzzles every time I go somewhere new, or how I slot words into even the most slowly paced conversations sometimes because I don't hear them. That's one kind of struggle. I've talked about how sometimes I feel as though people treat me differently in subtle, non-discriminatory ways, even if they're not actually doing so. That's another kind of struggle, though it's brought on by the same problem: I can't get enough information about how other people are treated because I don't see it or hear it as often.
( struggling on )
People often tell me they forget that I'm disabled when they meet me in person. I've written in here before about how I never forget, about how my mind gets to do jigsaw puzzles every time I go somewhere new, or how I slot words into even the most slowly paced conversations sometimes because I don't hear them. That's one kind of struggle. I've talked about how sometimes I feel as though people treat me differently in subtle, non-discriminatory ways, even if they're not actually doing so. That's another kind of struggle, though it's brought on by the same problem: I can't get enough information about how other people are treated because I don't see it or hear it as often.
( struggling on )
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