Reblogged anxeious
New Years resolutions: do whatever i want forever
Reblogged thevoidpeeringback
Reblogged nightshadewine
happy holidays to all the bedbound people, whether it’s your first year spending the holidays in bed or your tenth, whether you’re in pain or having an easier day, whether people come to visit you in bed or not, whether you’re feeling up or down, or angry or alienated. there are people out there just like you and people who understand.
Typically, I am not a New Year’s resolutions person. Even before becoming disabled the idea of making any sort of promise or plan determined by arbitrary calendar dates seemed unappealing to me.
But recently I’ve been reading and engaging with some art and writing by other disabled people and an idea for a project popped into my head, one that I plan to start in January 1st and hopefully complete throughout the year.
The emotional precursor to this project is something I’ve been progressively falling into over the span of the past year. I’m 22, and I’ve been experiencing debilitating chronic illness symptoms for 7 years now. When I was 16, 17, 18, I was so ripe with anger. I searched for doctors and diagnosis’ and other people that were going through what I was. My anger fueled me to learn about disability theory and the social model and to confront all of the ableism that had been ingrained in me and others. In short, a burning sense of rebellion sat alongside my pain and grief and misery, letting me find a purpose in all of it.
Fast forward to now. It’s been years of dealing with these chronic illnesses, and I have some diagnosis’ and a doctor that listens and I feel grateful for every bit of understanding I gain. But this span of time has also meant I’ve settled into this reality. It isn’t new and fresh and angering any more, it’s grown into something somber and soberingly real. The place where I used to feel a sense of pride and rebellion toward my disabled body and life, has been slowly consumed by the truth of it. The slowness. The sameness. The medications and the chronic symptoms and the never ending balancing act of trying to feel okay. I’ve lost my sense of myself.
My days are often the same. Same bed. Same ceiling. Same house. Same pain. Same fatigue. Same everything. Recently i’ve been trying to bury myself beneath this. Refusing to acknowledge the individual days, letting them accumulate and rack up in my brain, a pile of shame that I refuse to look dead in the eye. Because it's not pretty. It's not normal. I know some may even call it tragic. But I look at it again and again and I can see the way it breathes like me and moves like me and, whether I like it or not, belongs to me.
When reading other disabled creative’s work, like always, it revitalized something in me. It reminded me of how important their words are. Their photos. Their art. Their creations. Their remembrance.
I remembered that to let my life, my days, be accumulated and left to rot, was to do away with myself—much like the world has already done. And how dare I? How dare I too leave myself behind.
So this project is an intention made physical. A way to make myself remember myself. A way to bring forth my pile of shame and let it bask in the light of my own gaze. Because my life is going to be lived no matter what. So I have to make the choice to see what it is, because that is all there is.
My plan is to photograph myself or my room in some way everyday, even if it all looks the same or messy or uninteresting. I also want to keep some written component alongside the photos to give myself a way to summarize my days, even if they are all from bed and from home. From this I want to create maybe a little scrapbook or personal zine of sorts to just have a way to remember my days for one year.
I don’t want to do this to glamorize romanticize or force gratitude, but to remind myself that the disabled life deserves remembrance, documentation, and visibility, even if that visibility is just me. So often I think of and see all the physical documentation done by people of their lives and thought mine wasn’t worth that. Well fuck that, cause no matter what it is, I want to be able to look back on my life.
I’ve also been thinking about Alice Wong a lot and how she said that disabled people leave behind infrastructure. Cause like, that shifted something in my brain forever.
I just thought I would share this plan here because of why I’m doing it, and to maybe remind other disabled and chronically ill people whose lives feel constrained and isolated and monotonous that your days and lives are worth visibility and remembrance, no matter what that looks like.
Reblogged longcovidrat
“There is a cyborg hierarchy. They like us best with bionic arms and legs. They like us Deaf with hearing aids, though they prefer cochlear implants. It would be an affront to ask the Hearing to learn sign language. Instead they wish for us to lose our language, abandon our culture, and consider ourselves cured. They like exoskeletons, which none of us use. They don’t count as cyborgs those of us who wear pacemakers or go to dialysis. Nor do they count those of us kept alive by machines, those of us made ambulatory by wheelchairs, those of us on biologics or antidepressants. They want us shiny and metallic and in their image.”
Source: disabilityvisibilityproject.com
Reblogged zylahbee
Stop telling disabled people that you'd kill yourself if you were in our shoes. It's not the compliment you think it is. You might as well be saying "I'm surprised you haven't killed yourself yet. Why are you alive?"
It's a fucking disgusting thing to say.
Reblogged justthoughtsandthinks
THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING TO GET YOUR MEDS BEFORE THE PHARMACIES CLOSE
they are going to be CLOSED OVER THE HOLIDAYS and so will the DOCTORS WHO SIGN YOUR PRESCRIPTIONS.
if you don’t have enough meds to last the next THREE WEEKS, put in for your repeats and refills tomorrow! that’s Wednesday! do it! don’t go to hospital at New Year because you ran out of stuff!
it’s that time of year again! get your meds!
Also US folks: make sure to check in on your insurance plan for next year and see if there’s any changes to covered meds! (copay changes, formulary changes)
Reblogged mhgaza3
mahmoodgaza
Don't skip 🚨Emergency
✅️Vetted by @gazavetters, ( #564)✅️
We have been forcibly displaced from our homes and now find ourselves without shelter, food, or basic necessities.
We urgently call on kind-hearted individuals and humanitarian organizations to come to our aid.
Every donation, no matter how small, can make a big difference in the lives of our children and families.
My name is Mahmoud Al-Halaq, from Palestine - Gaza - I am 29 years old. This message is addressed to every person who carries compassion, kindness, and love in their heart. After 470 days of war on Gaza, the destruction that has occurred, the displacement we have faced, moving from one place to another, and the loss and death of loved ones and friends, I found myself alone without a home or place, and even the prices of food are astronomical. The world has changed so much that life has become gloomy and boring. Therefore, I ask for your help in rebuilding myself, my life, and my family's life anew. You are our remaining hope in life. If there were an opportunity to work, I would not waste a minute nor ask for help from anyone, but I urgently need assistance for my family, my children, and the women to rebuild what has been destroyed and crushed in this devastating and painful war. Thank you for your time and support; we draw our strength and resilience from your support. 🍉
✅️Vetted by @gazavetters, ( #564)✅️
Reblogged vaspider
“Did these people [in academia who claim that they are not exposed to disabled people] realize that when they encountered the work of Rosa Luxemburg (who limped), Antonio Gramsci (a crippled, dwarfed hunchback), John Milton (blind), Alexander Pope (dwarfed hunchback), George Gordon Brown (club foot), [Jorge] Luis Borges, James Joyce, and James Thurber (all blind), Harriet Martineau (deaf), Toulouse-Lautrec (spinal deformity), Frida Kahlo (osteomyelitis), Virginia Woolf (lupus), they were meeting people with disabilities? Do filmgoers realize when they watch the films of James Ford, Raoul Walsh, André de Toth, Nicholas Ray, Tay Garnett and William Wyler that these directors were all physically impaired? Why is it when one looks these figures in dictionaries of biography or encyclopedias that their physical disabilities are usually not mentioned – unless the disability is seen as related to creativity, as in the case of the blind bard Milton or the deaf Beethoven? There is an ableist notion at work here that anyone who creates a canonical work must be physically able. Likewise, why do we not know that Helen Keller was a socialist, a member of the Wobblies, the International Workers of the World, and an advocate of free love? We assume that our ‘official’ mascots of disability are nothing else but their disability.”
— Lennard J. Davis, Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body (via sociolab)
Virginia Woolf having lupus is not confirmed, but she had something chronic going on. Her ‘On Being Ill’ essay asks why illness - which has such a profound effect on the spirit - isn’t as common a subject in literature as war or love. ‘In illness words seem to possess a mystic quality’ and ‘we cease to be soldiers in the army of the upright’ - these words gave me comfort and resolve to resist pressure to remove cancer from my Time of Iron series. Woolf knew what she was talking about. Art is too often pain alchemised.
Reblogged alaagaza1
PLEASE DONATE AND HELP MY CHILDREN 🙏
Please don’t skip 🙏
Hello friends ❤️
I’m Alaa from Gaza 🍉, 29 years old…
I’m here because I need your help. I once had a job and a home filled with love and warmth, but when the war came, I lost everything and became homeless. I lost the dearest part of my heart — my beloved husband Imad — due to the Israeli airstrikes 😭😭
At the time, I was carrying my baby girl in my womb. I went through the worst conditions and nearly lost her several times due to the situation, until she finally came into this world — my daughter Fatoum — and brought me hope and life again 🥹
But now, I fear losing her again due to the famine and suffering that is tearing through the hearts of our children. Please, I am helpless and all I want is to keep my daughter healthy.
She is just 16 months old 😭😭🙏
I’m only asking for help to provide her with diapers and milk. The price of one can of baby formula is $50 and it's barely available — extremely rare.
So please, no matter how small your donation is, it will help me keep my baby alive 🙏
I am a single mother facing all of life’s hardships alone — famine, lack of milk, diapers, and basic needs beyond just food and water 😭😭
Don’t turn away — try to help me. I don’t want anything but to save my baby 😭😭
Even a small donation will bring hope to my daughter’s heart. Be human 🙏
Reblogged mhgaza3
mahmoodgaza
Don't skip 🚨Emergency
✅️Vetted by @gazavetters, ( #564)✅️
We have been forcibly displaced from our homes and now find ourselves without shelter, food, or basic necessities.
We urgently call on kind-hearted individuals and humanitarian organizations to come to our aid.
Every donation, no matter how small, can make a big difference in the lives of our children and families.
My name is Mahmoud Al-Halaq, from Palestine - Gaza - I am 29 years old. This message is addressed to every person who carries compassion, kindness, and love in their heart. After 470 days of war on Gaza, the destruction that has occurred, the displacement we have faced, moving from one place to another, and the loss and death of loved ones and friends, I found myself alone without a home or place, and even the prices of food are astronomical. The world has changed so much that life has become gloomy and boring. Therefore, I ask for your help in rebuilding myself, my life, and my family's life anew. You are our remaining hope in life. If there were an opportunity to work, I would not waste a minute nor ask for help from anyone, but I urgently need assistance for my family, my children, and the women to rebuild what has been destroyed and crushed in this devastating and painful war. Thank you for your time and support; we draw our strength and resilience from your support. 🍉
✅️Vetted by @gazavetters, ( #564)✅️
Reblogged fairycosmos
sugarmeows
Untitled (This is It. The Big Time) (ink on paper, 1986) – Raymond Pettibon
Reblogged creatingblackcharacters
if you can please donate towards school supplies for children of the congo. they deserve to learn in spite of everything.
Reblogged nightshadewine
there is still time. there is still time. until your bones are in the fucking ground there is still time.