Onion Not Even Doing Satire At This Point

Not my dad having called me a slur used for physically disabled people anytime I was injured or in pain during my childhood, long before I was diagnosed with my disability. I didn’t know it was a slur at the time.

Not me assuming that after I actually was diagnosed with a physical disability that he would stop calling me that out off respect or at least ask me if I mind. No one really cares about a child understanding words that are meant to be used as an insult because if they don’t teach them they’re an insult they think they can get away with it. That’s not good.

But I was having a bad pain day and my dad once again called me the G word, which not everyone knows.

He didn’t say it in front of anyone other than me and my mom, and he didn’t say it in an insulting way, however he has a tendency to say rude and cruel things with no intention of them being either (or with the intent but not caring)

I don’t actually have issues with the word itself on reference to me. Gimp(y) and Cripple aren’t words that I am afraid to use to describe me but I don’t need my father to assume I’m okay with using it as an adjective.

I wonder how he’d react to me referring to him as it? Another chronic pain haver who happens to use a cane on occasion.

Hmm

So I’ve been struggling recently with whether or not things I’ve done actually happened. Like my dreams are so plain and “normal” they seem like everyday occurrences so I can’t recall if they actually happened or if I dreamed them.

Casually remembering when a classmate mentioned something about burning easily in the sun and I said “pale skin gang” and they paused and said “no I’m definitely paler than you” and pulled up their sleeve.

Now I didn’t mean it as a competition, I feel that’s obvious from the statement, but I plopped down my milky, semi translucent arm and stared them down.

“Holy shit, you could be a vampire”

“Pale skin gang, we all burn together”

Mind you, I can see my veins from my shoulder all the way into my hands

But the nurses can never find a vein that works

Damn you rollie veins

i love you mr vinman

with great pain comes the great inability to form a coherent sentence

[ID: a 4-page comic in illuminated manuscript style of a person standing outside. /1: They look to the distance and say: "What is that dolorous cloud: that dreadful fright I see now on the dark horizon?" /2: They turn, upset, and say: "Alas! It is the brain fog approaching!" A purple cloud enters the panel. /3: They hold up their hands against the approaching cloud, saying: "A curse upon that fog that steals my eloquence. I...hate...it" /4: The cloud surrounds them and they say: "cloud"..."bad" /ID]

I don’t think I’ve talked much about having a service dog on here, but maybe I should

Boom used to be my service dog, I got him the summer before my last year of high school bcuz I needed a nurse 24/7 to ensure I could eat/sleep/stay alive due to a recent very traumatizing event in my life and my mom came up with the service dog idea.

Getting him was hard. And expensive. No trainers were up to my standards. I, who could barely take care of myself, had to train my own dog. The problem is no matter how hard I worked, my own family or other trainers would ruin it all by messing up my commands, by letting my dog do things I had trained him not to do. It wasn’t training anymore, I ended up simply having breakdowns because everyone kept ruining my dog. People close to me thought they could be an exception to the rules I had taught my MEDICAL AID because surely my DOG would learn the difference between them and strangers.

Eventually I brought him to school. Printed papers explaining what a service dog was and how to behave around him and I plastered them all over the place.

People barked at him, petted him, tried to grab his attention.

His harness was hot pink, patches and signs on it that very clearly said “DO NOT TOUCH” and shit like that.

Someone defaced one of the papers.

Going to school was already hard, I could barely leave the house, my mom had to accompany me to the school doors every morning and then a social worker at school would greet me there and take care of me throughout the day.

I had my own locker at a floor mostly unoccupied so I wouldn’t see other people much and my dog wouldn’t be too distracted.

But it was still to much and I ended up dropping out four months before graduation.

I couldn’t leave the house. I had Boom but he wasn’t perfect yet. People kept ruining him.

But eventually I managed to leave the house. Go to a shopping mall from time to time with him to just walk and have fun.

Too many times people came up to me to tell me the gear I used was hurting my dog. Too many times people came up to me to tell me that their own dog died. Too many people came up to him and pet him without even acknowledging my presence. Too many people telling me they wished they could bring their pets anywhere. Too many people disrespecting me and my service dog.

I stopped going out. I stopped being with my dog.

All this stress and trauma drove a wedge between my dog and I. I consider him my mother’s dog now.

I had to learn to handle myself alone when I went out. It took me years to learn to go out by myself. Only last year I started doing that.

My dog doesn’t live in my room with me anymore.

Having a service dog did still save my life. But those around me ruined that. They made it about themselves. They prioritized my dog over me. My dog that LOVES working. If you tell him “do you want to go to work” chances are he’ll get so excited he will attempt to do a backflip.

We used to have a deep bond. That bond is now broken. People took that from us.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is:

Let people and their service dogs alone.

You are not an exception.

You are not special.

You are disrupting the dog’s training and distracting it.

You are endangering a human life because you can’t resist petting the cute dog.

This isn’t about you. This is about a disabled person trying to simply live their lives.

You don’t know what you’re talking about, your advice is unsolicited and lacks understanding of what the life of a working dog is.

Just leave us alone.

My foot has been hurting for the last five days and is making it agonizing to try and do my PT.

Nothing looks wrong, it’s not a joint (I think?)

It doesn’t hurt all the time but if I bend my foot up towards my ankle it hurts or point it.

This is weird

Creativity and joy should not be seen as a distraction or as a bad thing WHOMST THE HELL-

idk why i just remembered this but all throughout kindergarten and first grade i used to draw a lil snail in the corner of every paper i had to turn in because it was a happy snail so i thought it would make my teachers happy when they were grading papers because i was a pure and simple child but in 2nd grade my teacher would take off 2 points if i drew it on my homework and 5 points if i drew it on a quiz or test so i stopped but like it was so harmless it was just a lil shitty doodle of a smiling snail it wasn’t distracting me or anything from the task at hand so i’d like to say to mrs whoeverthefuck that snail was supposed to be a happy thing u bitch

Read up on intersectionality in the pride community!

Okay so I know a lot about this kinda stuff because my friends use a lot of labels that people often over generalize as being “basically the same thing” when that’s not true.

Sure they have similarities, but similarities don’t mean they’re identical.

The biggest example is probably bi, Pan, poly, omni.

As I personally know at least one person each who identifies with one of these labels, I’m do my best to break it down from how it’s been explained to me.

Bi

Being attracted to two or more genders

Poly

Being attracted to multiple genders

Omni

Being attracted to all gender/lack of but maybe having preferences, maybe not, but acknowledges different genders

Pan

Being attracted to people regardless of gender

I am not an expert and some people may use these terms in different ways, I am merely restating what I have heard.

These labels are often widely down to,

“Oh, you’re basically bi”

Which is some stupid shit

They are similar

Not the same.