I am not really sure how to start this post, in part because I feel like saying anything would be a risk. A risk to my on going well being, a risk to my security in housing, in healthcare, in access to the basics. But I think that that fear is just a symptom of what I’m talking about.
Last March, my placement on SSI was approved by a judge. I think my lawyer was a good one, even though he was the sort of man who terrifies me because his demeanor triggers some unpleasant memories. The judge didn’t even ask me to come into the courtroom- he decided based on my paperwork to offer me a deal which included me having a payee, which is actually something that is preferable to me because of the sort of things I have difficulties with. The waiting room was tense, and there was plenty of papers to sign, but in the end it turned out alright. My mother and I went to the sushi place across from the courthouse there in Wexford, and I had avacado and cucumber sushi.
The problem lies in what it took to get to that point. You see, the entire process involved looking at everything I can do, and find the limits, the deficits, and the flaws. Highlighting the things that I can’t do, and expounding rather than ignoring or accommodating for how they touch every single aspect of my life. There is nothing that was allowed to be “good”- not even something relatively meaningless like my IQ, which the lawyer was displeased with.
My lawyer was very thorough with his prep. Really, that is part of why he’s a great lawyer for this sort of law. He knows what they are looking for, and he is forthright. It’s a difficult process, even with the assistance in figuring out the paperwork and who to talk to to get the evidence that is asked for and so on. It is hard work, draining and demoralizing, even with the support I had.
Part of the prep work involves the lawyer working with you to help you communicate how thoroughly your disability impacts your life. I had been brought up by a mother who tried to emphasize strengths based approaches, ones that could limit some of the trauma that society can cause when your brain or body doesn’t work within the range that the average person does. This process was the opposite. My strengths were to be minimized, the limits that my disabilities put on them emphasized. Uplifting language was considered not appropriate, as it was said to disguise the impact that my struggles have.
That I believe in and on my good days fight for disability rights was even considered a hindrance My lawyer told me he hates activist/advocate clients, and only because we have harder cases to make. The language and work that keeps us from despair, that gives us some hope that some day life will not be as much of an up hill battle, that says that we should and someday will be seen as equal- all of this was something that is looked down on and despised. The fact that we want to and can envision the sort of world where the supports and environments we need to not have to go through the SSI/SSDI process in order to survive is too uplifting, too insightful for us to need and “deserve” anything in the right now. The fact that it is just a hope that is still being worked toward, that that world where those supports exist isn’t here fully yet, is irrelevant when it is something we believe in.
The preparation process also involved undermining a lot of the work I had done to allow myself to get by in my day to day life with a limited number of meltdowns and panic attacks. I still deal daily with memories of the things that were said to me by my step father and some of the providers when I was young. I have many little things that will trigger the memories, that will make me slip into the words that were said. Before going through this process, I had a few things that I would repeat to myself to counter them- it didn’t make them go away, but it made it so that I was left with shorter periods of distress, or delayed reactions. But part of the process was to emphasize the counter arguments- that is, to repeat in a not as cruel way the things that caused me trauma in the first place about myself. To emphasize incompetence the futility of the things I have achieved and the impossibility of success at the things that I wanted. To demonstrate less than.
I find myself, now, more incapacitated by these things than I have in years.
Throughout, I’ve clung to my advocacy and activism around disability. I’ve felt like a hypocrite, or like I was-had to be- doing it for someone else, because what was being re-taught to me was so against it all. But I’ve also felt like I was surviving, that this work was like some sort of safety line. I don’t know how well or if I would have survived it without.
Perhaps the level of struggle I’m having has to do with the nature of some of my disabilities. That perhaps the anxiety disorder processes and the tendency toward fixation from being autistic are what they call a perfect storm, moving towards a cataclysmic failure when they interact with a system that encourages devaluing. The part of me that thinks this reflects about the way that some of my friends don’t seem as traumatized as I feel from their time going through this. I know that in some cases this isn’t true- it’s just not something they want to or can discuss. I know trauma is like that, from both personal experience and from the writings of others. And yes, perhaps some really weren’t traumatized by the process, left struggling inside more while their supports and safety outside are stronger.
But as much as the part of my brain where the fear lives fixates on that, the part where logic lives knows that it’s irrelevant. No one should be coming out of this process struggling emotionally more than when they entered it. They should be in a position where the security and services that become available allow them to gain skills, either to better their quality of life or to eventually not need financial support, even if they do need the medical. None of us should be having to scrape back old skills because we lost the connections that allowed for them.
I’m terrified to post this. But perhaps that is because of what I’ve written- and maybe that fear is what has kept someone else isolated too.
Cracked Mirror in Shalott 