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10:32pm May 17, 2012

Have had so many conversations lately.

With individual friends about why the hell we have this impulse to frigging work ourselves to death. And I’m not talking metaphorically. (Neutral pronouns for anonymity.)

I’m talking about an autistic person with urges to work so hard at hir job that sie loses the ability to work at all and then potentially loses both things that mean a lot to hir and things that keep hir alive.

And a person with lupus who despite being in the middle of a huge flareup, has urges to work hirself so hard that sie could potentially die, or lose a lot that sie has gained.

And my own problems with, well, lots of things. But like the time recently that I worked myself into a state where I needed to strap my bipap machine on not because I had sleep apnea, but because otherwise my breathing muscles were weak enough to be affecting my oxygen level. And throughout all this felt like I was being lazy if I took a break to regain enough physical strength to breathe.

And I know there are others. I’m just foggy headed right now. And here again I’ve got a cold and am feeling way more under the weather than nondisabled people with colds feel, and yet I’ve got this tape playing in my head telling me I am lazy for resting, sleepin,g and watching mindless movies on Netflix.

This is ridiculous.

This is dangerous.

Sometimes I wonder if this isn’t a cleverly designed way to kill us off. Tell us we are lazy and watch us die trying to prove you wrong. Except I know that a lot of bigots (and it’s not just disability related, it’s anyone who’s ever been stereotyped as lazy and unwilling to do real work, anyone who has ever had to get into the habit of working way too hard for way too little benefit) don’t think that hard about people they hate. They just hate, and hate itself takes care of the neat little systems created to kill us. (And that’s all any hate ever says: Die. Die. Die. All the elaborate variations are just window dressing.)

Weird how hard it is to resist even when you know it’s designed by hate to kill you.