vomitus

“Portrait of Dawn-joy” by Kateryna Fury

(Photograph: Work-in-progress for 2013 exhibition, “Roaring Whispers,” featuring digital painting by Kateryna Fury, autistic paraplegic artist with Ehlas Danlos Syndrome, framed and installed by Dawn-joy Leong.)

This post may be incoherent. Babbly. Erratic. That is because wordedness is failing me right now, there is a huge chunk of festering goop hurtling around in rabid mockery inside my verbal brain. Forgive me. I hope the message somehow transcends my lack of worded ability.

Disabilities is becoming a cute little pop-up-trend for inspiration porn these days. Take a look at this article, “We are not here for your inspiration.”

It’s been weighing on my mind for a few days now, ever since that day, that horribly disappointing experience, which sent me into a spiral of despair. A thick, glutinous blob of nausea wedged between diaphragm and stomach. And a sinking feeling…

accommodations

Accommodating grace, graciously accommodating.

This post is in response to yet another powerful piece of thinking by Judy Endow. Read it here: Autism, Accommodation and Differential Expectations.

Ah, accommodations… Sometimes, people make accommodations for me, announced with a warm fuzzy glow, and then suddenly withdraw them because it’s no longer comfortable for them to continue, and leave me to fend for myself without offering me any other alternatives. In the meantime, I am making accommodations for them all the time, being grateful, showing gratitude as best as I can, taking into account their own neurodiversity quirks, and, yes, even in the way I do not rant and scream when said promised accommodations are abruptly withdrawn. It is very very tiring, making accommodations for anyone, but the Endeavour of Empathy is important. We must not stop endeavouring, though let’s not forget that the endeavour is to Self as much as to Other. We autists struggling to survive this terrain need to remember that empathy is for Self too, because so often the demands of normative social constructs say we must do otherwise, and so we do.