10:12am February 29, 2012

“And no, I am not saying every single thing labeled as a disability is just a different way of being with no downsides. We’d be rid of several of our chronic health problems if we could. It’s just better to assume common sense and assume a person does NOT mean the most ridiculous, extreme extrapolation of a concept you can imagine.”

amorpha&

Seriously. Seriously. My life would be so much easier if that happened. So would my writing. I wouldn’t feel like I had to go to such excruciating levels of detail, adding tons of disclaimers everywhere, if I didn’t constantly get smacked in the face with assumptions like this when I forget just this one disclaimer.

And given what writing takes out of me, it affects my health as well. And my willingness to go back and rewrite stuff I really badly want to write but have been freaked out too much based on someone making a completely off-the-wall assumption about what I meant.

Of course I can’t claim to have never made such assumptions myself. But at least I have horrible reading comprehension to blame at least some of the time. (The real thing. Not the thing people accuse each other of in a snarky manner during misunderstandings.)

But seriously this prevents me from writing on a lot of subjects at all except when I feel like I can handle the utter panic and disorientation that happens when someone does this. Which may or may not be comprehensible to anyone who isn’t in the position I’m in. Which is that my entire ability to hold a meaningful conversation rests so much on the other person. That at the first sign of trouble I start losing my shit because this is how the Really Bad Stuff has always started, and that horrible feeling that the other person is holding all the power.

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