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11:04am February 29, 2012

Conversations I wish I didn’t have to ever have again.

I’ve been feeding disability-related books to a guy who works with me. He reads if there’s nothing else to do. He’s quite an avid reader in general. So I figured since he’s sometimes getting paid to sit around and read I might as well make it educational.

But I had no idea the kind of ideas that lurk inside him. That seem to require un-educating.

“Reading this woman’s work was so… inspiring… blah blah human spirit…”

(OMG WTF.)

“Um. If you said that to her when she was alive, I think she would have run over your feet. Or at least chewed you out.”

“(Embarrassed mumbling.) I just mean, I couldn’t have done it. Like, if it were me.”

Cue a really long discussion about how if it were him, he would still be him, and still have the same “survive and go on with things” instincts that most people do. Especially being born disabled like the woman in question.

I hate having to oversimplify things like that. But it’s really hard to explain to anyone the ways disabled people are exactly like everyone else and the ways we are totally different. Especially in words. Especially to someone who reads entire books by major disability rights activists and mostly sees what he’s been taught to see.

To his credit, he grasps that he’s ignorant about this stuff. But I hang out with so many disabled people I forget how other people actually see us. Sometimes I want to forget. Sometimes it’s too painful to look at someone I have a meaningful relationship with and realize how much of me they don’t see.