Ive Been Trying To Make My Poetry Actually Something.

ive been trying to make my poetry actually something.

Good news: calf muscles r growing back!

Bad news: ow

My back hurts from sitting, and my legs hurt from standing. And I didn't get a call back about my x-ray *jumps into the sun*

hey, disabled person! do you feel tired all the time? do you feel like you’re working twice as hard as abled people for half the outcome? do you take longer to do every single little thing than an abled person would see as reasonable? well. I would like to introduce you to the concept of crip labour (I first came across this in Smilges, 2023 but I cannot verify whether they came up with the term)

crip labour is a term to describe all the extra work disabled people do on a day-to-day basis. it’s also a form of labour that is invisible to abled people, because they just don’t have to think about most of it. it includes:

the extra labour required to get ready to leave the house in the morning (e.g. the extra steps involved in getting dressed or having a shower)

the social labour required in order to communicate your needs to abled people

the labour involved in having to plan ahead (e.g. knowing where accessible toilets are, knowing where ramp access is, knowing which venues are safe for you to be in)

the administrative labour involved in gaining access to particular institutions (e.g. applying for disability welfare, applying for education access plans, etc)

having a term to describe all the labour involved in keeping yourself alive and happy helps to make that labour more visible. it gives us a way to point out that we are doing more and with less capacity, and it helps to explain why so many of us are so exhausted all the goddamn time

so I hope this is a helpful term for people to bring into their lives!

i simply need everyone to understand that i am tired all of the time. literally at all moments. if i ever go somewhere and do something, it is not because i am somehow full of energy, but instead that i have carefully stored up all of my little bits of energy like a dragon collecting jewels, and am now vaporizing them all at once