“It’s Honest Work”

the potters

Point

💥🙌👏

Abled people have seriously skewed the meaning of “recovery” and i am Not About That. 

Whenever I hear the word mentioned (both on this site and in real life), the conversational subtext is usually “when will you/they recover enough to meet the standards of abled society?” As if I, a nuerodivergent person living with chronic pain will one day get up and fit seamlessly into a society not made to accommodate me. (Or as if I have any interest in doing so, which,, HAH. Nope!) I’m basically resigned to hearing this from abled people by now, but I’ve noticed fellow spoonies getting frustrated about not being able to do stuff that Abled Society says they should and falling into the pit of “when I’m recovered I’ll meet those standards”. That is not okay!!

For one, chronically ill and disabled people’s lives fit a different pattern than abled people. There is no magical point where all our symptoms vanish and we return to mainstream society — the hint is in the keyword “chronic”. It means that our condition or illness is a) going to stick around for a long, indeterminable length of time, possible lifelong, or b) recurs frequently or consistently. For example, my autism will never go away and I am completely fine with that, but fluctuating circumstances may mean that I manage the traits better at some times than others. My RLS will never go away either, but unlike autism it isn’t constant — I can have weeks, even months, with no symptoms and then suffer for the next six months straight. If I say that I’m recovering, what I mean is “I just had a symptomatic flare-up that knocked me off my feet but I’m managing the fallout better and getting back to my version of normal” NOT “i am now Fully Functioning and able to do bed-linen laundry without pain and suddenly capable of stuff i couldn’t do before.”

Secondly, recovery is a personal experience that nobody else can define. I’ve said it already but boy is it worth reiterating: recovery for chronically ill/disabled folks means getting back to OUR individual version of normal, not ANYONE ELSE’S version of normal. This definition is particularly important when talking about anyone who used to be (more) abled because in those cases, recovery can mean finding a NEW version of normal. 

If someone is in remission for a disease — let’s say cancer, since that’s a Big Thing — they could end up symptom-free, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve recovered. Cancer (both the illness and the treatment of it) puts a huge about of trauma on both the body AND the mind, and they may need to adjust their lifestyle because of that. Expecting your life to go back to 100% normal after an illness/accident is harmful to your mental and physical health and I am SICK of abled society encouraging it. 

Recovery means understanding what your body and mind needs and learning how to provide it so you can live comfortably/manage your symptoms; NOT so that abled people approve of how you live your life! Just remember that 

2x01 is an objectively hilarious episode when you think about it cause buck hated eddie for what? maybe 12 hours maybe even less? all it took was one “good boy” from eddie and buck was down bad twirling his hair and kicking his feet and he’s been obsessed with eddie ever since!! eddie diaz brat tamer of all time

I've had a hard time articulating to people just how fundamental spinning used to be in people's lives, and how eerie it is that it's vanished so entirely. It occurred to me today that it's a bit like if in the future all food was made by machine, and people forgot what farming and cooking were. Not just that they forgot how to do it; they had never heard of it.

When they use phrases like "spinning yarns" for telling stories or "heckling a performer" without understanding where they come from, I imagine a scene in the future where someone uses the phrase "stir the pot" to mean "cause a disagreement" and I say, did you know a pot used to be a container for heating food, and stirring was a way of combining different components of food together? "Wow, you're full of weird facts! How do you even know that?"

When I say I spin and people say "What, like you do exercise bikes? Is that a kind of dancing? What's drafting? What's a hackle?" it's like if I started talking about my cooking hobby and my friend asked "What's salt? Also, what's cooking?" Well, you see, there are a lot of stages to food preparation, starting with planting crops, and cooking is one of the later stages. Salt is a chemical used in cooking which mostly alters the flavor of the food but can also be used for other things, like drawing out moisture...

"Wow, that sounds so complicated. You must have done a lot of research. You're so good at cooking!" I'm really not. In the past, children started learning about cooking as early as age five ("Isn't that child labor?"), and many people cooked every day their whole lives ("Man, people worked so hard back then."). And that's just an average person, not to mention people called "chefs" who did it professionally. I go to the historic preservation center to use their stove once or twice a week, and I started learning a couple years ago. So what I know is less sophisticated than what some children could do back in the day.

"Can you make me a snickers bar?" No, that would be pretty hard. I just make sandwiches mostly. Sometimes I do scrambled eggs. "Oh, I would've thought a snickers bar would be way more basic than eggs. They seem so simple!"

Haven't you ever wondered where food comes from? I ask them. When you were a kid, did you ever pick apart the different colored bits in your food and wonder what it was made of? "No, I never really thought about it." Did you know rice balls are called that because they're made from part of a plant called rice? "Oh haha, that's so weird. I thought 'rice' was just an adjective for anything that was soft and white."

People always ask me why I took up spinning. Isn't it weird that there are things we take so much for granted that we don't even notice when they're gone? Isn't it strange that something which has been part of humanity all across the planet since the Neanderthals is being forgotten in our generation? Isn't it funny that when knowledge dies, it leaves behind a ghost, just like a person? Don't you want to commune with it?

look at him go!!

honestly no wonder harrow forced ianthe to lobotomize her so she could save gideon. listen…LISTEN…if i was a secret-war-crime cult nunlet princess worshipped by my entire planet and the only person that (barely) kept me in check was my childhood nemesis—a butch a year older than me, towering over me in stature and physical prowess, and so hot it made my teeth hurt from how hard my jaw clenched in her presence, who wielded a two-handed seven-foot sword and had irritatingly huge biceps and told very lewd stupid jokes and also learned how to wield an entirely new weapon and be my bodyguard with startling accuracy in three months—only to have us finally learn to trust each other because we got invited to a magic murder mystery and then before the bubble burst i spilled the worst secret about myself that i was born because my parents murdered an entire generation and tried to Kill Her along with them and she just wouldnt die, and i told her this expecting a swift death i believed i deserved, only for her to fucking cradle me in her big butch arms and kiss me on my forehead with her soft butch mouth and just. forgive me for a shameful weight ive carried my entire life and then MAKE AN ACTUAL NECRO/CAV VOW with me despite every evil thing i have done to her……to have her tell me, in the end, bleeding and broken after putting up the most beautiful and glorious fight of her life, that she understands purpose and she understands duty and she knows loyalty more fiercely than ever now, that she knows who she is to me, that there is no her without me….to have her backed into a corner and make the ultimate sacrifice…..for me…..to recite scriptural wedding vows of eternity to me in her last wisps of soul-consciousness…..if i thought there was even a snowflake’s chance in the pyre that i could save her by turning myself into her very own locked tomb, i’d be begging ianthe tridentweirdius to crack my skull open and turn me to mush too, goddamn. i understand you harrowhark girl you don’t have to explain a thing to me. god said you couldn’t undo the lyctor’s bond bc it’d kill you. you told god and his angels that not even a lyctor’s bond could outshine the power of female spite and lesbianism and they didn’t listen. they didn’t believe you. but i heard you loud and clear and i was 17 and hormonal and hopelessly romantic not too long ago unlike those fucking dinosaurs and i’m saying it’s valid it’s what i would have done and really everyone should be thanking you for not being worse and more wretched about it, all things considered

astonishing how good it can feel to get some chores done sometimes. you’ll be sitting there like damn i am some type of horrid little smeagol like creature who should be crushed to death. but then you do some laundry and you’re like wrow. im actually gods most fuckable soldier.

Planning for a flight now consists of planning out how to document the legal violations the airline is inevitably going to commit.