as small as a world and as large as alone

9:12am July 8, 2014

madeofpatterns:

itrhymeswithalayne:

people have no idea what its like to be 14 and have everyone telling you that you’re faking and pretending to be ill for attention or to skip art class and the doctor’s telling you you’re ‘just being a teenager’ when you actually had a serious kidney disease

if someone hadn’t eventually listened to me i would have died

Please, please support self-diagnosed teenagers, don’t pretend they’re not really disabled, don’t belittle or mock them, don’t exclude them from disabled spaces and for the love of god don’t pretend you know more about them than they do

And you know what?

If a teenager’s life is such that faking a disability for attention seems like a good idea, *they probably actually need attention*.

All of that.

Plus I think that being young when some of my genuine disabilities started, made people less likely to believe they existed.  People treat you like crap when you’re a disabled teenager for some reason, and they always think it’s for attention.  I think by the time I was a teenager I’d already formulated the idea you describe above – if someone needed attention that badly, why not give it to them?

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