Archive of ‘personal’ category

13
Sep
2020

Expecting people to “act less disabled” in spaces.

categories: personal; word count: 487 words

This is the closest that I have come thus far in this entire blog, aside from writing about… various experiences that I have had with attempted religious indoctrination as they relate to Bub’s father’s family, in writing about specific experiences with people, but I felt like they had to be addressed in the way of disability advocacy: the expectation that non-disabled, or sometimes even other disabled, people have in expecting disabled individuals to “tone down the disabled parts of themselves” in general, to “act less disabled” in mixed spaces, and not to talk about the parts of their lives that have to do with their disabilities, even if being disabled “takes up a large part of their lives” and they are proud of being disabled. Like I’ve said, this seems to be something that society does in general, whether it is being done by non-disabled members of society or even disabled members of society who do not feel that they are “as disabled”, who have better passing privilege (the ability to be seen as non-disabled by society if and when they want to be, or simply to “turn off” being seen as disabled to their advantage), or who are not as proud of being disabled as the disabled person in question. I’ve noticed that this intersection can also sometimes occur when the disabled person in question is a member of the disability advocacy community, or “disabled community”, in general.

I do not like having to “tone down the disabled parts of myself”, as I feel that being disabled is an important and integral part of myself. I can not be myself without being disabled, and I should not have to expect to “be the non-disabled part of myself”, because that is a large part of my identity. If I were not disabled, I would not be the person that I am. If me being who I am makes you uncomfortable, that is something that you need to reconcile with yourself. That should not be something that I need to “tone down” in myself to make you more comfortable with me. I should not be expected to “act less disabled” in mixed spaces because there are non-disabled individuals present, because what sort of standard does that set in the era that claims to be all about social justice? Not a very good one, I’m afraid. Disability is not, and should not be, something that you can “turn on and off” to make other people’s lives easier. If that is something that I feel I have to do to make a group of people’s lives easier, maybe I need to consider how much time I spend around that group of people. Me being disabled is simply me being myself. If someone can’t tolerate that or doesn’t like that, then they need to tell me that they can’t tolerate me and that they don’t like me. It’s just that simple.

11
Sep
2020

Once upon a time, I made exceptions for men.

categories: personal; word count: 462 words

Remember that post where I said that I could write a post on making exceptions for men within the context of polyamorous relationships, dating monogamous men who were willing to “make exceptions for me”?

That post is here, and that time is now. I didn’t forget to make that post. I was always going to.

From the time that I began outing myself as polyamorous (or, initially, non-monogamous) all the way to my refusal to date monogamous men, there were times when I dated monogamous men who were willing to “make exceptions for me” within the context of a relationship where they were clearly monogamous and not willing to date or be in relationships with anyone else other than me, but were — or at least made it seem, because it never looked like it was any different from my point of view — perfectly alright with me dating and being in relationships with other men (although, for the record, my “comfortable limit” of relationships has always been two, although I would not be opposed to three if I were in two and the right person came along… I like to remind confused monogamous people that they tend to have more than two close friends).

At first, I was fine with this as long as the monogamous partner that I was with was fine with this.

However, as time went on, I became increasingly less fine with this, because I felt like the dynamic of each relationship where this happened was tilted toward me in a peculiar way, even though the monogamous man stated — and sometimes insisted — that they were fine with this. A lot of the time, I felt like they were making this exception because it was me who they were dating, not because they would normally make this exception or consider this carte blanche. Even though I would never refuse to give someone permission to date other people or be in relationships with other people if I wanted that same permission myself and so always extended that permission, making it clear, the men who “made these exceptions for me” obviously never took me up on that offer, and they insisted that they wouldn’t because they “were willing to be monogamous for me”. It just eventually got to the point that I decided not to date monogamous men any longer, men who were more comfortable being monogamous, or men who “were willing to be monogamous for the right person” (hello, Kat Blaque) because I didn’t want to have to deal with the unevenly skewed dynamic that would always be there in the relationship even though they insisted “that things were alright”.

I started refusing to date monogamous men eight years or so ago and am still glad that I have done so.

10
Sep
2020

I’ve started this habit, and I do not regret this.

categories: blog maintenance, personal; word count: 322 words

In between migraines and… living the slightly busy life that I do with my kids, I’ve started to queue up posts, and with very few exceptions, I do not regret getting into this habit. This means that if I am having a day where there is a lot of migraine activity (and to get the diagnosis of chronic migraine disorder, you have to have at least fifteen headache days per month with at least eight of those being migraine days, and I have that diagnosis… on top of that, mine are intractable, which means that medication does not easily “put them down”), or Bub and Monster are keeping me busy, I don’t have to worry about missing days posting on here. Having posts queued also helps in the event that my server actually does suffer the downtime that I mentioned last month, because when it does manage to come back up, the posts that I had queued will automatically publish… or, at least, that’s how they have so far, but the first, last, and only downtime that I actually saw my site have lasted over the course of one night, and then I had to fix the SSL that I have here.

I am continuing to titrate down on Trokendi, having been on topiramate in some form for awhile now.

Like I’ve probably already mentioned(, using social media so much that I have to ask myself “have I mentioned this here?”), if I am having migraines at the frequency and severity that I am, the medication that I’ve been on the longest… might not be the one that’s working. I did feel it when I dropped down from 300mg to 200mg, but once I got over that hurdle, I felt no difference. And it wasn’t even so much as more migraine activity than I felt the side effects — or lack of some, if you want to be technical — of dropping down 100mg.

08
Sep
2020

When my site crashes, it’s like third baby crashing.

categories: blog maintenance, personal; word count: 328 words

Another thing that I didn’t mention in here was that last month, for the better part of one evening and… through the following night, my site actually crashed. Part of this was due to my site’s host, although they were good about letting me know this when I submitted a ticket. For some strange reason, the other part of this was due to my SSL, which I was able to fix the following morning once my site’s hosting came back up. In the interim, it was like my third child had crashed, though. However, I attribute it to the nortriptyline that my neurologist has me on for migraine prophylaxis that I was more mellowed out about it than I would otherwise have been — at the very least, my blog crashing for several hours would have upset me more than it actually did (and I mean, it did bother me that my site was down for roughly twelve hours, but it didn’t distress me). But at any rate, I do have some really nice SSL going for my blog now due to it, which is good.

I think it would actually bother me more if Instagram crashed for a long time, because for all intents and purposes I should be the world record holder for most pictures taken on it (116,000 and counting… and yes, that is how many pictures I’ve actually taken on there). My account there is private right now, though I would be willing to open it up and keep it open if that would allow me to actually get the world record for that, heh.

Since I’ve been uploading most of my Facebook videos to our YouTube account, who knows though… maybe I’ll inadvertently get the world record for most videos posted over there since all of those have to be public by default. I might trip and fall myself into a world record. It’ll happen before I know it. At some point it has to.

1 … 273 274 275 276 277 … 318