Unless you are Disabled, you don’t understand

This is a rebuttal to this blog post here:  (< Click for trainwreck, CW it’s ablelist and full of woe is meeeee warrior mom bullshit) 

 Disclaimer, my parents accepted me a bit more than that little boy’s parents accepted him…this is just a POV piece to shine light on the other side of the equation

Story Start:

I came into this life expecting one thing, anticipating acceptance.  What I was given, was not that at all.

Instead, I was given a set of parents who demanded me to be different from what I was.

I struggled.  My parents could not accept that I was not your normal child. They yelled, they fought, they nearly divorced because I could not conform to whatever they thought I should be.

I think they loved me, I’m really not sure, because I never did what they wanted me to.  I was always in the corner, or on this wooden seat, they hit me, they yelled at me.  They screamed at me “WHY CAN’T YOU JUST BE A NORMAL KID?”

They sent me to this place, where I sat in a room with this lady.  She held my hands down.  Told me waving them was wrong.  She put her fingers on my cheeks to force me to smile even though I didn’t want to, I was not happy to be there.  I was happy with my toys, my blocks, my quiet.  I was happy listening to the same song over and over again.  I wanted to watch my favourite movie for the third time that day but this woman said I had to watch something else.  I did not want to watch something else, so I got sad and cried.  I was punished for it.

They tried to get me to play soccer.  I loved how the ball rolled when I kicked it. I also loved the feeling of the grass on my skin so I would roll around in the soft field ignoring the yelling kids around me.  My parents got mad at me even more.  I really don’t think they loved me.  They kept taking things away from me whenever I did anything I enjoyed.  It made no sense, so I got mad, and got punished even more.  I had one friend, their name was Sam.  One time, my mom said I couldn’t play with Sam for a whole week.  I didn’t understand why, so I cried and got in more trouble.

The worst part though, was going out shopping with my parents.  The bright lights, the loud music, the talking…so much talking.  I wanted to focus on it all to see what was being said, but I couldn’t focus so it was all just a jumble.  The lights were so bright, they hurt my eyes. I wanted some cereal but mom said no and grabbed my hand hard and yanked me back to the cart and that was it.  It was too much.  All the sounds all the lights everything just exploded in my brain all at once…and I sat on the floor screaming in pain and terror.  I was done.  This happened almost all the time when we went to stores.  

My parents tried feeding me food I didn’t like, so I didn’t eat.  It tasted bad, it felt funny in my mouth, so I threw it up.  I got in trouble and had to sit on that bench again.  The doctor told her that I had to eat it she said, so I would get better, so I would be normal.  I thought I was fine, but maybe if I ate it, she would love me.  I tried one more bite and vomited it back up onto the plate.  Nope.  I was not going to.

Why couldn’t mom and dad just love me?  

If you like this little story, I actually do write for a living.  Here is my patreon https://www.patreon.com/MBakerAuthor  I share a chapter of my current work in progress each month for my patrons. This goes towards an editor and saving up for post-secondary education.

botanyshitposts:

ferguswyrm:

botanyshitposts:

botanyshitposts:

currently being forced to learn about an*mal cells in cell bio…..the emotional labor…..immense 

animal cells be like hohohohohohohohoooo look at me i am squishy and can cause cancer and the researchers poke me and see how i squish and then go on for 40 pages about how amazing my mechanical strength and rigor is while simultaneously talking about how fragile plants are in comparison even though a bullet would kill me instantly but hohhooh i have body heat and clearly defined organs who’s individual failure could mean death for the organism as a whole….hohohohhoghogoh i eat and dump waste into the bloodstream and am absolutely insufferable about my range of motion

how do you maintain homeostasis with all that salt in your system?

listen….i am a simple man….i sit in the marsh and excrete excess salt 

Plant Cells are Legos.

Animal Cells are Jellos

gallusrostromegalus:

vampireapologist:

I’m gonna say it I think deep sea animals are beautiful and incredible and very neat and I know that’s not an unpopular thought like many many people agree but I don’t at all hold the sentiment that they are terrifying and grotesque and anything else like that.

The popular jokes like “we need to leave whatever is in the ocean down there I’ll take my chances in space” are funny I love those jokes but truly

When I see a photo of one of the more supposedly horrifying fish from the deep I am mystified I am filled with wonder and even adoration an that’s all

idk they are just truly amazing.

They go down…..so deep…..they just live down there…with all of their teeth. They don’t have a care for or a thought for us or anything else up here. They’re just down there glowing and swimming and eating.

Amazing.

They’re not scary they’re just so vastly different and their existences are so vastly different from anything we can comprehend. I can’t fathom what life would be like down there.

I love them. They are animals, same as anything else. Not scary. Just incredible.

So my introduction to Deep-Sea creatures was different than most people’s in that my grandparents lived right near the Monterey Bay Aquarium and I have many fond memories of going there with them right as the MBARI deep-sea rover program was getting underway.  

For a while there, they were discovering a dozen new species per dive, and couldn’t tell people fast, loud or lovingly enough.  There were even live veiwings of the MBARI feed visible at the aquarium, along with monthly recaps of everything they’d seen in the previously unexplored Monterey canyon.  You pretty much had to make a blood sacrifice to the dark gods to get tickets, but I remember sitting in a completely packed auditorium as someone with more than one doctorate burst onto the stage to thunderous applause and shrieks of delight as though he was there to sing the national anthem at the superbowl instead of about to show us 40 new invertebretes.

So where I think a lot of people were first exposed to things like Anglerfish and marine worms via “ooh look how creepy these things are!” my first exposure to them was watching a marine biologist literally jumping up and down on stage with excitement , voice full of love and delight as he showed us, seen for the first time on camera and not dead in a net, this lovely creature:

The video we saw was silent, in which the Medusa slowly turned toward then away from the camera, elegantly corkscrewing up through the slow updraft current.  She was magnificent, graceful and absolutely wondrous.

“Isn’t she the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”  he asked, tears in his eyes.

And to thirteen-year-old-me? Yes, yes she was.  She still is.

She’s from a very, very different world than here, and her kind are probably unfathomably ancient, and to be able to catch even the briefest of glimpses into a life so completely different than ours is such, such a privlege.

I have the same feeling about that OP.  My intro was the Royal BC Museum’s Open Ocean exhibit (Years ago, before they revamped it to the stupid single room it is now…)  It was a MASSIVE Exhibit along with an elevator ride that showed you what deep sea creatures live where.  I was fascinated and went through it multiple times whenever I visited.  It annoyed various people like “You know there are other exhibits right?”  

What pains me is how many of these creatures we have unknowingly caused to go extinct due to our environmental fuckery?

infinitonys:

smashing-anarchist-poet:

laim-o-nade:

furioustheowlboy:

therapist-anon:

bri-lin-biscuit:

my-sins-might-be-your-tragedies:

chibi-blue-scapula:

this-account-is-a-mistake:

tasmanianstripes:

finding-a-way-to-run-away:

Parent: yells at and threatens child over a mistake

Child: doesnt want to spend time with them afterwards

Parent:

Parent:*yells at and threatens child over a mistake*

Child:*doesn’t want to admit their mistakes and starts keeping secrets from their parent*

Parent:

parent: *yells at and threatens child over them self-harming*

child: *doesn’t talk to parents about their issues and feels worse*

parent:

Parent: *attributes all their child’s achievements to god and all the mistakes to the child*

Child: *actively avoids academic achievement and becomes an atheist*

Parent:

THAT LAST ONE IS WHY I STOPPED ATTENDING CHURCH AFTER I STARTED THERAPY.

Parent: *uses personal info,told to them in confidence as ammo to make child feel bad*

Child: *never tells the parents about how they feel or their personal insecurities*

Parent:

Originally posted by goverload-deactivated20190608

wow this tea is exceptionally tasty tonight thank you

Parent: *tells child they’re overreacting every time they speak up about poor mental health*

Child: *never tells parent what’s wrong until they break into a screaming match with parent*

Parent:

Parent: *immediately dismisses or laughs at child’s ideas about plans, future and clothes choices, without consideration even when asked for ideas.*

Child: *becomes indecisive or never gives ideas because they’ll just be dismissed regardless of how good they are. Answers every question with ‘I don’t mind/ care.*

Parent:

That last one though is so me…