as small as a world and as large as alone

12:37pm June 6, 2014

patternsmaybe:

celestia:

patternsmaybe:

rightnowbb:

Dismissing or disbelieving somebody’s “I can’t” makes you an ableist piece of shit.

End of.

Even if you’re being ~inspirational. Even if you’re being ~encouraging. Especially if you’re thinking about how their inability is going to inconvenience you.

Respect “I can’t”.

Not always.

Not if someone’s “I can’t” is “I can’t respect your boundaries because I find it triggering when people say no”

why would you even respond with this.. seriously just shut up.

Because I’m a disabled person who has been repeatedly abused by other disabled people. And they said pretty much exactly this to justify the way they treated me and shut down criticism of it.

So, no, I’m not going to shut up about the harm it does to make blanket statements that people are pieces of shit for doing something that I’ve *had to do in order to survive*.

Scenario:

I have bronchiectasis.  Exposing me to a cold or a flu is a good way to give me a lung infection that could land me in the hospital or even kill me.  Everyone who knows me is aware of this.  I am extremely explicit about people never, ever visiting me while sick.  And on the rare occasion that they’re getting over something, the kind of mask they have to wear and hand-washing they have to do to make things as safe as possible.  But in this case, that wasn’t going to happen because this person had no sense of subtlety.  So when she told me she had the (respiratory) flu, I told her to stay away from my apartment until she was 100% better.

She showed up at my apartment the next day, coughing and hacking without covering her mouth, and barged her way in and talked to me for an hour.  I was too weak to do anything to get her out of my apartment.  So she stayed and spewed germs all over the place while I tried to tell her how dangerous it was to make me sick.

Her response to my “You need to stay away”?

“I CAN’T.”

“I can’t because I’m so upset that I neeeeeed to talk to you right now.  If I don’t talk to you right now [about a situation that she created by picking fights with people and then accusing them of abusing her] I might kill myself or otherwise be so severely distressed that it’s an emergency.  I can’t stay away from you just because I’m sick.  I can’t.  Because I need you.”

This caused me to put a detailed sign on my door about when not to show up at my door.  And to lock my door.  And to alert all of my support staff about her.

Then, she began following all my support staff around.  They were trying to avoid her to avoid getting germs they could spread to me.  She followed them around the building demanding that they drive her to the doctor.  They told her to stay away from them.  She said “I CAN’T.  Because I can’t breathe and I need you to drive me to the doctor NOW.”

They said “If you really can’t breathe, call 911.”

She never called 911.  She wasn’t having that much trouble breathing.  She just wanted some way to tell them that she couldn’t possibly leave them alone and that they absolutely had to do what they wanted.

I am not an ableist piece of shit.  I am a multiply disabled person who tried to give this person every possible chance I could give her.  She took advantage of me.  She took advantage of my friends.  She used her disability (including both disabilities she had, and disabilities she made up – like lying about her IQ) and her “I can’t” and all that, in order to manipulate us into doing what she wanted.

People like her are uncommon.  I am always hesitant to even mention stories like this, because every time someone hears a story like this they assume that lots of disabled people are like this.  But when a disabled person has no boundaries, and when a disabled person is abusive and has no boundaries, then this is what it looks like, and you cannot respect their manipulative “I can’t” when it infringes on your very real “I can’t” (which may be life and fucking death), and you are not an ableist piece of shit for resisting.

The reason that I was able to be abused and taken advantage of by this person for about a year and a half of my life.  The reason that a friend of mine landed in the hospital drained to the bone because of this person.  The reason that my health went from terrible to scary.  Is because I believed that I had to respect every disabled person’s “I can’t” or I was an ableist piece of shit. 

She took advantage of that.  She took advantage of my own past of not being believed.  She knew that I would bend over backwards to believe her because I knew how horrible it was not to be believed.  She knew I would deny flagrant evidence that something fucked up was going on, because I knew how horrible it was not to be believed.  And because some of the things people have said about me look like flagrant evidence themselves, if you don’t understand what really happened at the time.  And because of all that, I allowed her into my life, I helped her get things she didn’t need, I lied for her, I did a lot of things for her, all because I felt like I had to always respect “I can’t” and similar things.

I understand why rules like this exist – I understand why it's generally good to respect “I can’t”.  I understand way so very well because so many people have not respected me… and then I’ve collapsed and ended up in the hospital, or other ugly situations.

But I’ve also learned that it’s very dangerous to present a rule like this as “You have to do things this way or you’re a piece of shit.”  You have to give the exceptions to the rule or people will try and follow it to the letter even in situations like the above where you have to break it or people will end up in very dire straits.

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