Me When The Disability Disables Me: Oh What The Fuck? This Sucks. What The Hell Man!

I remember my mother constantly threatening me with stories of horrible foster homes, always obsessed with making sure I believed anything would be worse than the abuse currently happening at home. She threatened to drop me off at the fire hall, or that if I called CPS myself, that's what would happen.

Here’s a reminder that if your parents/guardians were ones that threatened to “send you away” anytime you acted out or didn’t live up to their expectations, this was wrong and you deserved so much better. I know my parents used to threaten to send me to a school away from them because my grades suffered. It felt awful.

If you have trauma because of it, your trauma is valid. This sort of emotionally abusive tactic from parents/guardians can make a child feel that their love is conditional and can also make a child feel they can and deserve to be discarded if they do something wrong. I want you to know that you should never have been made to feel that way and that it’s okay to make mistakes. You deserved so much better than this.

my number one woman behavior is saying i’m fine with any pronouns and silently ranking people in my regard based on what they do with that information

For no reason here is a library story

Here's something that's been mindfucking me for the past two damn weeks. So not only do I need surgery to have my colon and rectum removed & to get an ileostomy, but I also have to see a pelvic floor reconstruction surgeon.

Because with my Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, I'm high risk for prolapses, and guess what being sex trafficked for the majority of your childhood does to your developing pelvic floor? Spoiler: nothing good.

So because of this blessed combination of genetics and abuse, I have multi-pelvic-organ prolapse, and no ability to withstand pelvic floor therapy. I tried. I just literally cannot fucking do it. And there's the fact that pelvic floor therapy might not even work for the severity of my issues anyway. Ergo, surgery.

Now I get to have two surgeons argue over the best way to butcher my body into something livable and I can't even explain how fucking tired I am. I don't even know what to feel about it beyond exhausted.

And then I have friends who are also going through things and I want to be supportive & I try to be, but I just can't do all the things I want to do because I'm spending half my fucking day in a dissociative fog because I just don't know how to process any of this.

everyone talks about cutting off a toxic parent

but no one ever talks about the pain of wanting a parent but knowing yours cannot love you the way they should

Obviously there are many things to dislike about adulthood but as someone who grew up in an abusive household for whom adulthood offered the only chance at an escape, it's incredibly important to me that i romanticize adulthood whenever possible because i know there are kids and teenagers like me out there who are seeing nothing but complaints about rent and taxes and the loneliness of living on your own and i know they're going to internalize all of that and assume it means that adulthood won't offer them the freedom and safety they've been dreaming of. So while i never want to minimize the difficulties of being an adult, i also want to highlight how incredibly nice it can be to finally have ownership of your life and your body and your time and money and food and everything else in a way that you never had before. You can choose when you wake up! You can choose what you have for breakfast! You can choose when to go to sleep or if you want to (inadvisably) stay up all night watching tv in the living room! In the living room! You can choose what to watch! These are little things, but they are worth taking pleasure in, and they are worth looking forward to.

My parents: what trauma?

Me: uh-

When you’ve been severely ill throughout your early adulthood, it means coming up against this again and again:

OTHER PERSON My 20s were wild – copious amounts of alcohol, partying, having sex with multiple people… SEVERELY ILL PERSON Yeah, mine too – copious amounts of herbal tea, being too exhausted to dance or have sex…

OTHER PERSON (a brief what-the-fuck expression passes over their face before they continue as before) Uh huh, so like travelling, starting new jobs, moving in with partners SEVERELY ILL PERSON Emergency trips to hospital, being too ill to work or go on dates OTHER PERSON (looks momentarily confused, then carries on as if SEVERELY ILL PERSON has not spoken) Going outside every day, holidays with friends, being carefree SEVERELY ILL PERSON Being bedbound/sofabound/housebound and stuck indoors, extreme social isolation, the crushing enormity of chronic illness grief and medical trauma OTHER PERSON ?! OTHER PERSON … OTHER PERSON (as before: enthusiastically begins a story about their dating/romantic/sex life as if SEVERELY ILL PERSON has not said anything at all)