sinisterporpoise

I wonder if going back to college at the rate I'm going isn't tilting at windmills. I'm not adverse to tilting at windmills.  It could be said I've spent a long time doing it, including the once held assumption that I could make a living as a writer. I have, of course, done that, but things were different when I managed to do that.  In the world of the Internet, things change rapidly.

Going back to college full time is a bit different than my attempts to do something extremely difficult in the past. This time I knew I might have problems with time and energy. I'm not surprised when I encountered them, but I'm having to wonder if continuing this pace for the next two years is a good idea. My body can't take standing for more than two hours, according to Indiana's disability determination board, and they're not known for being generous with their estimates. I know that sheer stubbornness will cause me to press on regardless. I've wanted to finish a college degree, even if it's just an associate's degree for sometime. 

There are things I've discovered since going back, including the rules of being female in any technology related endeavor.   I'm going to repost these here sometime, after fixing some formatting issues I have with them. I also have one teacher who seems to be stressing that any student with a disability can ask for accommodations in my presence. (Thanks. I got the message from you and all the other professors on the first day of class when they went over the syllabus.  If I know I'll need them, I'll ask for them.)

While all of this is interesting to me, it's probably not interesting to someone who is not going back to college in their late 30s. Instead, something else has been on my mind. I've been thinking about disability as an identity versus disability as a medical phenomenon.  I'm not sure where I stand on this. If someone called me a person with a disability or a disabled person, I'd probably me mildly surprised. I do not have a preference for either one. I might have a preference if it came to me earlier in life.  My surprise comes from still not thinking of myself that way. This does not mean that I fall into the only disability in life is a bad attitude camp. It means that I still suffer from internalized ableism most likely. This should not surprise me. Internalized transphobia still haunts me even after forty years.  The teaching of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the attitudes of my father towards LGBT people explain the transphobia. I cannot explain the ableism quite so easily.


True, society does bombard us with messages that having a disability -- even a mild one -- is a disasterous occurrence. The only character on television who suffered from chronic pain was miserably misanthropic, even though he hated people long before he suffered the infarction that forced him to use a cane.  There are few other examples. When we do see people with a disability in the media, it's often about how they overcome their obstacles to achieve some incredible feat. In the past two years, I've learned that this is called inspiration porn.  As much as I hate to admit it, there are times when I still succumb to this way of thinking. It's deeply ingrained. It may not have the force of religion behind it, but it has decades of enforcement through media messages.

So, I'll probably not decide whether I follow the medical or sociological model of disability. It may be a while. The fight is a lot like the one i faced for being transgender. I knew I was transgender, but I also knew that voicing these opinions led to negative social consequences. At least with being transgender, I eventually managed to say, "This is making *me* miserable. It's time to screw society and do what I need to do."  The fact that it took 36 years says something about the anxieties I have over it.  At least I've come to the point where I've gotten used to some of the new normal.  There are some things I'm still dreading, but these are things that have not happened yet, and they may not happen at all.*



*I believe I'll soon have confirmation of having some form of dysautonomia, however, I know that I might be wrong. I also know that anxiety tends to amplify problems to be greater than they actually are. The fear I have over not being allowed to drive is an example of this, and it's something someone would have to be from a small town to understand.   Not being able to drive in a small town as an adult greatly curtails an individual's freedom.



 

 My anxiety levels have risen after a long period of calm. I am almost certain that the interview at the Hamilton Center and the local OVR representative is the cause.  Deploying various techniques will help me get to sleep over the next few nights, but my mind – I think it’s the monkey mind – is currently swinging from tree to tree thinking about all the things that might happen.  Because my knowledge of Zen currently pretty much ends there, I’m almost certain I got it wrong. I do know, however, that these anxiety states and the scenarios that play out aren’t usually what happens in real life. Repeating this to myself helps sometimes, and other times it does not.

I do not need to worry that I’ll go through a bakery program again and then get frustrated at all the tasks that require coordination that I do not have. (I can bake cakes, breads, and cookies very well, but do not expect me to decorate them.)  I am pretty sure that the most I’ll have to worry about is ending up working at a Good Will as a cashier or some sort of office position. I’d rather not work for Good Will, if I can avoid it, but having some money regularly coming in is a lot better than having to rely on what little SEO content work there is, which right now is providing far less income.  Also, if i don't get some sort of income stream soon, I'm likely stuck in Indiana until I get disability at least.

Right now, I need to stop speculating about what might happen and try not to worry about it too much. In a few more days, I will know what this will happen, and it might be a good thing. As it stands right now, the meeting does nothing to make my situation worse.

Now that I have gotten this out, I might be able to keep it out of my thoughts as I try to drift off to sleep.  Because of some strange bureaucratic procedure that I don’t quite understand, I have to see my PCP tomorrow for ankle pain, even though I assume he receives reports from the rheumatologist. Maybe it’s because she hadn’t received the physical therapy report yet. In any case, I hope I don’t have to see the same podiatrist again.

Side notes:  The Families Against Autistic Shooters Facebook page is disgusting.  It shouldn’t have crossed my attention. 

People frequently say that they are not the people they used to be in online fibro chat groups. Sometimes, it is easy to dismiss this is a product of the complaining that goes on in these environments. Sometimes,  the people there just need to vent about how things are for them at the moment. I'm not any better than anyone else at this.  

However, the topic of mourning the people we used to be came up several nights ago. I must admit that I had difficulty with this at first. After all, I was still the same person, even if I had a new challenge to deal with. I still did many of the same things I did before, including go to work. Sure, I switched my exercise routines and I avoided standing for long periods of time when possible, but at first these were solutions to a problem I hoped to be temporary.

But if it were not for the magical effects provided by denial and sheer stubbornness, I doubt I would have been able to continue as long in my job as I have. Most people would have quit when I experienced severe leg pain on a daily basis. I, on the other hand, persisted. I knew how hard it was to get disability benefits, and I doubted I'd qualify. (There's also the problem of me not knowing what was causing the problem at first.)

I'm still trying to cling on to how things used to be, rather than finding the proper balance for what my life has become. I want to believe I'm still the person who can go into noisy environment without the quick energy drain.  I felt surprise when someone described three people in the LARP group as handicapped. (I named two right away. I had a hard time thinking about the third one. When she uttered the phrase, "Lara is handicapped." I finally realized who the third person was.)

I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to think of myself in this way. I'm not sure that I want to. I know I've encountered something similar as a transgender person before. For the longest time I didn't want to identify as queer.  All of the social stigmas that went with it frightened me. A good dose of internalized transphobia and homophobia went with it. It was easy to blame this on my religious background. A similar excuse cannot be used for my own fear of having a disability.

Even when I went through the disability process the first time, I had the attitude that the term really didn't apply to me. After all,  I thought I functioned normally, although most people who knew me would question this. (They suspected that I suffered from some form of mental illness long before I told them in most cases.) When the administration denied benefits, I did not fight it too long. I just returned to the work force as best as I could.  The environment for people working for the content mills was much better at the time. My writing didn't make me rich, but it did provide money for basic necessities.  The new problems have physiological causes, and I still feel like I'm somehow cheating the taxpayers, even though the system was set up for people who could no longer work.   

I know I should not feel guilty, and I know that I am lucky that it wasn't something much worse.  Some part of me keeps thinking that others will see me differently during the times I use a walking stick or a cane.  

I should probably stop rambling. Anxiety, as usual, makes the problem worse. I need to get over my own fear of what admitting that things aren't what they used to be might mean. I also need to be less concerned about what other people think. After all, I'm probably the only one who sees myself all that differently. (Well, except for my employer who seems to be sending signals that I'm a less valuable employee than I used to be.)

 While I have extra energy, which I assume is related to something resembling reasonable Winter weather holding sway for the past few days, I've been trying to get things done. (Washing dishes, sweeping floors, throwing out things the roommate hopefully won't notice or doesn't remember she has, and most importantly, doing some freelance writing and working on personal writing projects.) However, I have come to the more difficult parts of the project. Two of the essays "Exploring Femininity through Online Gaming" and "The Year in Shamokin" were particularly difficult to write.  Rewriting them and doing the final edits will be just as fun, I think.

These events revolve around stressful times. It took the death of my mother to pull me out of the original Everquest, a game which I spent ten to fourteen hours a day playing, and The Year in Shamokin details the events that led to my departure from the Keystone State. The latter ended with an argument from an Ultra-Christian landlord, who also suffered from PTSD.  If the events had not occurred at the anniversary of my mother's death, I might have handled them better. (I also should have asked the psychiatrist to up my Zoloft dosage at this time.  That time of year has always been difficult for me.)

But I have finished the 2nd draft of the first essay mentioned, and I'm reluctant to go on to the second.  As tempting as it is to take a nap, I'm pretty sure I've already slept for twelve hours today.  Perhaps I need cookies to restore my mana...