8:01pm May 19, 2013

“Because I spend so much time now in a very professional, gender normative work environment, I have to remind myself that I love weird people, I am weird, I want to be weird, and being normal is truly horrifying. I’m thinking of that experience of seeing someone on the street or on the bus who is working some kind of weird, non-normative look and feeling some delight and relief, like the person’s existence is making space for you. I have often felt that way when I see other visibly queer or visibly trans people, or other kinds of rule-breakers. It’s beautiful to see people taking those risks and its wonderful to have those moments of mutual recognition with a stranger in the midst of a hostile world.”

—

Dean Spade (Queerture: Q & A With Dean Spade)

I remember when I got out of the system for the first time. I’d been in this closed world. Where either I was at home with my parents, or in some kind of institution, or in special ed, or in day programs. So my entire interaction was with disabled people of some sort or another – usually some combination of mental illness and developmental disability (the mental institutions and special ed I was in were mixed psych/DD usually, and I was usually considered both myself), and also physical disability sometimes.

So.

Then suddenly I was out in public.

Alone.

Around mostly people who either weren’t disabled, or you couldn’t tell they were.

And it was like culture shock.

I couldn’t take it. I kept expecting people to be making unusual sounds, moving in unusual ways, talking to themselves, breaking out in screaming fits. And nobody was doing it.

And it was very uncomfortable and felt like there was no place for me.

And whenever I saw another disabled person, especially someone behaving in ways that would get them labeled with a mental illness or developmental disability. I was so happy. And felt like maybe there was a place in the world for me after all. P

I didn’t know this, but I moved like that too. I didn’t look normal. I’m told this by people who knew me at the time. That I firmly believed I looked normal, but I very much didn’t, to the point that even though I could sometimes speak, people treated me as “low functioning” a lot of the time, or thought I had an intellectual disability. That’s only gotten more extreme with time, but apparently it was quite apparent even back then.

So what would happen.

Is other disabled people would was up to me on the street and start talking. They always spotted me and wanted to have a conversation. I never understood why I was being singled out, because I didn’t know I looked different myself. And I didn’t even know it was weird that so many disabled people walked up to me and started talking, all the time, whenever I went out.

Except I went for a walk with a friend.

And after awhile, she turned to me and asked “Do this many people always walk up and talk to you in public? Because that isn’t normal.”

It took me years to realize they were having the same reaction to me, as I did to them. They knew I was one of them and they wanted to feel less alone. And I was a fairly good listener, in that I was passive and would let people talk to me endlessly about anything, whether it “made sense” in typical terms or not.

Anyway there was a long time when if I saw someone disabled, I would feel so happy. Like I wasn’t alone out in this strange world where everyone acts normal and thinks the rest of us don’t exist. Pretends we aren’t there. Ignores our presence, wishes us gone. It meant something to me that there were more of us.

In this case it wasn’t usually people making a choice. It was people, like me, who couldn’t pass even if they wanted to. So it wasn’t like we were making a brave choice to show ourselves, it was more like we had to, whether we wanted or not. But still. It meant a lot to me that I wasn’t alone in a world of people who all behaved the same. And I must have had the same effect on others, given how people reacted to me.

Notes: