I’m Disabled. My Life’s Complicated. That’s Okay.
Navigating my disabilities and the expectations of people who knew me before my diagnosis
I sat inside a sterile white hospital office and recounted my progress since my last doctor’s appointment. A woman whom I love more than anything sat across from me. We’ll call her Azucar. My curandera, Dr. Sam, a neurologist I’ve known for more than a decade now, sat quietly at her desk, her back slightly curved as she leaned forward. She’d only break her posture to scribble a few details, and then she’d return to her stance as her black hair brushed beside her shoulders. The same strands of graying hair sat unevenly spaced, with only a few newcomers to accompany them; they’d been that way for years.
Dr. Sam asked me about “that thing” I did with computers — I moderated Game Informer Online — and I told her it was going well. New tools since our transition to Disqus made the comments section a helluva lot easier to manage; trolls couldn’t game the system, like a particularly notorious one had for several years.
Physically, I still felt the pangs from failures before; progress I’d made with my physical therapist at UNC slowly became undone due to ableist assumptions about my experience. Well over a year after being discharged, I still felt angry about my healing…
