Support is Support, not Force

I'm disabled. I need support. I needed support when I was a child. I need support now.

I have supported people. I support people now. I have supported children. I have supported other adults.

And this matters. Because there are all of these assumptions that if you are Disabled you Can't Do Things. You Need Help. You need things done for you. You need things decided for you.

There are these decisions, that we need Supported. Where by this they mean other people come in and do what they think we need. Other people come in and move our bodies without our consent. Other people come in and change our homes without our consent. Other people come in and make decisions about what we're doing moment to moment. Other people come in and choose and choose and choose and do and do and do.

And we can't choose. Because we're disabled. We need Support.

But that isn't support. None of that is.

Someone coming and moving things around my home around so that I can't find any of it doesn't help me no matter how much they said this is cleaner and better organized. Someone telling me what I need to do in the day doesn't help me even if they say this means I'll get through more things, because it doesn't matter if they're more things if its not what I want. Someone coming and moving my body doesn't help.

It is traumatizing to Need Support and be given the "support" of having all autonomy taken away from you. It is traumatizing to not be allowed to decide the own words you speak, how you move your own body, how to exist, in a world. But that's what happens. Because we need Support. And it is what is deemed Correct To Do to us.

I am disabled. I need support. That is true, even as much as I say that none of this helps, and that all of this is traumatizing. I can't suddenly choose to not need support, because what people give to me under the name of support is controlling me, rather than helping me.

I am disabled. I was a disabled child. I needed more support then in many ways. I didn't know the language I know now; and yet I needed to communicate with people who treated me as lesser. My body was growing, with all of the unpredictabilities of trying to learn how a body moves. I needed support, and was so often given no choice.

Because, really, if you can't choose whether someone is helping you, are they supporting you, or are they deciding you obviously need something done? If you can't choose, who and how and when, and the details of what someone is doing and what someone isn't, then are they supporting you, or are they deciding for you what they think you are incapable of?

Because sure, maybe I can't do that, but I can try if I want to. And I can do that with you giving me a place to fall when I fail, because I can try and try again, and figure out what it is I want to do and how I want to do it. Or maybe I can't do that, but I can decide I do it anyways, because I don't see a choice, so instead I say I need you to do this which people say isn't going to be an option, that's not how support works, but it is how it works for me.

Or maybe, I say please, I need help, do this for me right now.

Becaues you know what,
it is my choice.

And someone Supporting me, by never asking, and never listening, and never letting me decide what is done and how? that isn't support.

Me being able to decide to do the impossible, or say I can't, and in either case, having someone do what I say I need

That is supporting me.

And I need support.
And I can get support.
And I can support others.
And I can be both and do both at the same times.

Because we live in this wonderful horrible interdependent world, of trying to survive.

And that takes support.

My name is typed, not spoken

My childhood is filled with I must speak this way. I must speak the right way. I must speak properly. I must speak the way I am told.

My childhood is also a childhood of teaching myself to type, by playing on on my mom's computer, before we ever had typing lessons in school. My childhood is getting the internet, and of finding forums.

Like many millenials I grew up both offline and online. We got the internet at home when I was 10. I was told I couldn't let anyone know who I was. By the time I was 13 I had a screenname that I was regularly using.

But, it was growing up on aim, that let me communicate. It was the internet that gave me my voice. It was the internet that was where I was able to say things that weren't being deterimed by other people. It was the internet that was my freedom.

And this was the very simple reason. I could type.

I grew up being taught that my speech needed to work in certain ways. I grew up with speech being the priority the goal the most important thing. And at the same time, not being about me.

The internet was where I could type.

The internet was where rather than focusing on did I say this the right way no I didn't I was wrong I am messing up, I need to try to fix that, I can't get it right. And literally never getting to any content, I could find forums and spend hours typing about lord of the rings and getting to have it be about something and something of my choosing. It was where I could learn to interact, by getting a chance to do so.

.

So, it's no wonder that my name is typed.

Because my name has always been typed.

By which I mean, I was in college when I realized that I would sometimes just not notice when people used my legal name, but would reliably notice if people used my screenname, and over the years as I first became more out as nonbinary, and evaluated my mental name, my screename is what always comes to mind first.

And yet, I always think of it as typed.

My name is typed. Not spoken.

It isn't that you can't speak my name aloud, it is that, it is typing, that is the primary interaction. Typing, that is the first place to go. Speech is secondary if that, and if not lower on the list.

Because it always has been, and because that is me and this is me. My name is typed. It is typed because it always has been growing up finding my own way to type. It is typed because that feels right. It is typed becaues I can neuroqueer my name and have done so throw away your centering of speech and say my name is typed. It is typed because I want it to be.

We might live in a world which prioritizes speech and thinks of speech as the first and formost.

but that isn't the world of my gender

my name belongs to the keyboard

my speech is still not behavior

There is a pain in the comfort

of silence

of forced waiting

of being able to think clearly

of being able to know who I am

because I know it never can last

There is a pain in the comfort of trying and failing and that being okay

because I never can try 

never

never

never

it's always just a lie

there is a pain

a pain

a pain

a pain

a true literal migraine

in the exhaustion 

no

the lack of exhaustion

of being able to say this

because usually I can't

because usually you are too worried about what I say and how I say it and if I say the right words

and it doesn't matter how much anyone says

i 

can't

fight

that

because there is a child in me who doesn't know anything else

there is me not knowing if i want to cry

or if there's me having so much less overwhelm that i can manage without a meltdown

because it doesn't matter that people aren't understanding my body

when they don't listen to my words anyways

so maybe let words at least be something i can control

rather than something so out of control that i don't understand that either

in a spiraling cacophony that is the world

and my body

and my mind

and everything in it

and nobody bothering to care

when you aren't going to listen why does it bother how i say the words

shouldn't i at least get to say the words i want

oh, no

sorry

it only matters how i say them not what i say

there is a pain

because

no matter

how

many 

times

i know

that i can live like this

and understand myself

it will never last

it only takes one little drop

because even now, years later

i will never

actually

truly have control

of my own words