Sometimes Ireally Need To Remember This. That My Life Is Worthwhile. Especially When People From My LARP-community

Sometimes Ireally need to remember this. That my life is worthwhile. Especially when people from my LARP-community are insulted or just sad I choosed to not go on their game. Or when I stay home instead of literature-event that actually seems nice and I want those people to come to my own book presentation. When I feel I forgotten and out of loop. But hey. I'm doing my own best and I cannot do any more. I am what I am and if I feel better home, shit, I have every reason to stay there and rest. Every. Reason.

your time is worthwhile if your disability means you have to rest most of the time. if you can only do a few events a month, or a year, that's alright. if you need to sleep a lot, lie down a lot, that time isn't wasted. it doesn't make your experiences any less meaningful. feeling like you're missing out on different activities doesn't make the ones you do any less worthwhile. being disabled and restricted in activities doesn't make you boring or diminish your worth. there's no threshold for things you have to do to "really experience life" - you experience it by being alive. and every disabled life is a life that's worthwhile

this is a poem

You see, I'm that kind of disabled that you cannot identify just by looking on. Yes, I'm phsycally disabled, yes, I'm mentally disabled, but I write books and cook and live with my kid and pets and sometimes they even write about me in the newspaper or I'm in TV. Small country 15 minutes famous, but still. For a long time I felt bad for living out of goverement support mostly or asking my friends to drive me somewhere or - sometimes - needing help from local social worker. Because I was ashamed for not being able to do everything myself.

People like on the picture gave me totally new view ro myself. Shit, I'm terribly brave to live like this, all disabled and hurting and tired! Shit, I DESERVE help - because I'm human. So what that I don't make money - I'm human! I'm already worthy because of this! All the rest is just bonus.

(I bring a sort of “Everyone has inherent worth regardless of their productivity” Vibe to every conversation that ableists don’t really seem to like)

I just want you all to know, that if and when this site does experience a real exodus and/or get sunsetted for good, even if we don't keep in touch I'll remember you so fondly. You're the online equivalent of the other kid on the beach where we built sandcastles together; the girl at the campsite where we explored the trees. You're the drunk person who shared kind words in the bathroom at the club, you're the talented artists at the life drawing class or the poetry night in a city where I don't live anymore. It makes me sad that maybe in the future our paths won't cross so easily, but even when we leave this little shared piece of cyberspace, carried away on our briefly intersecting trajectories, just know I still love you

Story time:

In middle school biology, we did an experiment. We were given yams, which we would sprout in cups of water. We then had to make hypotheses about how the yams would grow, based on descriptions of yam plants in our books, and make notes of our observations as they grew.

Here’s what was supposed to happen: we were supposed to see that the actual growth of the plant did not resemble our hypotheses. We were then supposed to figure out that these were, in fact, sweet potatoes.

What actually happened was that every single student in every single class lied in their notes so that their observations perfectly matched their hypotheses. See, everyone assumed the mismatch meant they had done something wrong in the process of growing the plant or that they had misunderstood the dichotomous key or the plant identification terminology. And, thanks to the wonders of a public school education, everyone assumed the wrong results would get us a failing grade. We were trying to pass. We didn’t want to get bitched out by the teacher. Curiosity, learning, science - that had nothing to do with why we were sitting in that classroom. So we all lied.

The teacher was furious. She tried to fail every student, but the administration stepped in and told her she wasn’t allowed to because a 100% fail rate is recognized as a failure of the teacher, not the class. It wasn’t even her fault, really, though her being a notorious hard-ass didn’t help. It was a failure of the entire educational system.

So whenever I see crap like Elizabeth Holmes’s blood test scam or pharmaceutical trials which are unable to be replicated or industry-funded research that reaches wildly unscientific conclusions, I just remember those fucking sweet potatoes. I remember that curiosity dies when people are just trying to give their superiors the “right” answers, so they can get the grade, get the job, get the paycheck. It’s not about truth when it’s about paying rent. There’s no scientific integrity if you can’t control for human desperation.