Monday, January 25, 2016

Heartache

Those moments that occur when your born into one of these bodies. The moment able-bodied people don't get; although the good ones empathize. It can happen over e-mail, social media, or the telephone. Sometimes even the television Is how you find out another someone is gone; although that's worst case scenario.

If they’re not among your close cohort you exhale, Thank God, and feel guilty.

You may have known them, but you knew of them. Worked the same campaigns. Attended the same meetings. Used the same service provider. No one in the gimp world is that isolated from anyone else. That’s just how it works.

You friend people on social networks who you’ve never met because they’re your friend’s friend. Never mind that you may have met the first friend in person. Someday, of course, you plan to at a conference, a con, or an action. However, your schedules are so packed, your health so variable, and your money so scant you can never seem to coordinate it. You decide to house them because you understand what it's like to need somewhere to sleep and pee while you try to change the world.

Too often, it's the people around that bear the ire that's always under the surface. The anger seeps out when someone’s hospitalized, sick, or worst yet deceased. The people most likely to endure the outrage have learned not take it personally. They’re not the reason. They understand that if they're smart enough to still be in my life.

Tonight is another one of those worry nights. I'm not even 40. No one my age ought to know death as intimately as many within the disability community are forced to deal with it on an ongoing basis.

Now  I know what some readers are thinking. I would have less grief in my life if I had fewer friends with disabilities. That's as may be, but I would also be much less sane.  Even the most awesome non-disabled person is only so capable of understanding what any person with a disability (PWD) copes with on a daily basis. I need my PWD friends. That need just means I spend more time fretting than most people do.





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