as small as a world and as large as alone

11:58am February 22, 2014

dendriforming:

More stories where disabled people stay both alive and disabled at the end, please?

I know, I know, you’re going to tell me all about accuracy. But the thing about long-term illnesses is… they’re long term. There are loads of time windows in which you can tell stories about us doing things other than dying and leave space for more *life* at the end, and the fact that this doesn’t happen is suspicious.

Also there’s many diseases and disabilities that don’t even technically alter lifespan, or don’t have to, or don’t do it all that much, and yet they’re all portrayed as killing people.  I honestly think, besides some of the other really fucked up norms, this reflects what society expects of us once we go into a nursing home or other institution.  They expect disabled people to disappear into institutions and die there.  And when we die there, in real life, everyone expects it is because of our disability, rather than because nursing homes are breeding grounds for death.  So everyone just assumes disabled people should die.

But the other reason that I think is pretty intense as well, is that people think that death and cure are the only possible options for disabled people.  Nothing else is acceptable.  Living in between, like most of us do, isn’t okay.  They’re uncomfortable with us not being dead, so they kill us off.

I think it’s both of those things. 

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