chicating

for a disability and storytelling fellowship. But I'm not gonna do it, because they need everything, like, now, at this point, and because I think the margins I sit on are a bit neater than what they intended--sometimes it really does confuse and hurt me that there does not appear to be a space that is truly mine on this planet that is not a blogging box, but, like, be happy, secure and assertive, right? #Ladyboss. Even special stuff either tells me I'm too special or not special enough.
This, quite frankly, is a head-fuck that I'm tired of being upset by, but I think I'm over it and there it is again! I wish we had disability community that didn't feel like it was on a point system or that I had to collect enough crip skee-ball tickets.
But even though this is not 'my shot", it felt good to imagine doing things in the future again that are not waiting out Medicaid or making phone calls to human cardboard cutout Mark Kelly. I've decided that the next thing that comes along that is even kind of close to the battered old mental building that somebody might call my wheelhouse and doesn't involve my having a lot of extra cash, I'll apply and sort out what happens from there.(And then, probably have some face-plant to write about, because to tell you the truth, I don't feel like somebody who gets what she goes after anymore, now that my Advanced Placement test scores have gotten all moldy. But the glimpse of agency and motion felt good.
my life kind of works when it fits around somebody else's life. Which is about as thrilling as it sounds, as much as I'd love to cut to the part everyone wants and say It Turned Out Okay. But I can't yet.

This is from what would be my novel, "Wedded Twist"...I'm not sure I believe it will be finished and published anymore because I've been thinking "ooh, my first novel" about some little nonsense FOREVER, but maybe.
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(If you feel like I left something out, let me know in the comments)

We, the undersigned, in our position as members of the Disability Issues Organizing Team, since disability crosses all artificial borders, affirm our commitment to access and freedom for all people. We affirm our commitment to peace, especially since war is a mass disabling event that touches lives long after the combat is over.
We demand a government that meets the needs of all its citizens and residents, in accordance with FDR’s Four Freedoms: Freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of expression,freedom of worship. FDR, himself a survivor of disability, used his experiences at Warm Springs to inform his work.

After all this time, I finally wrote an "OMG, the stick's blue," story, as a lot of people did in my creative-writing classes in college. (A few were good, but I think that's what drama is, when you're twenty in the burbs. (I couldn't write one because I wasn't having sex--not that I am now, again, but a sort of speculative-fiction elegy to my would-be fertility seems appropriate now, in ways it might not have when my fondest dream was to Fit. Which, of course, I never really managed, more than being the quippy mascot who makes everyone feel better with how weird she is.But I guess I didn't want to fit enough just to copy, though I did want to rip off Ann Beattie and Philip Roth pretty hard in those days.

It's weird when you discover your own feelings when you write. Especially since this is so...wacky.
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he's the *best* one, so, who better to throw paint for?
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Paralympian to Kelly:
"What makes you different is your greatest gift."
Me:
Can I take it back? And not for store credit.