It’s like this.

(In retrospect this seems horribly pretentious, I’m sorry, but I finished it so you get to see it.)

It’s like this.

Living with a disability is a struggle.

There are bad days and good days, and there is always something worth living for, but it’s a struggle sometimes, or maybe even most of the time.
Sometimes the things you struggle with are a fundamental part of your disability and there’s no way around them, and you grieve for the things you’ll never be able to do. Sometimes, if you could just get the right equipment, the right medication, the right assistance, your life would be pretty great. Sometimes you still can’t get those things.
Sometimes your disability brings things into your life that make you happy and proud. Sometimes you’d take a cure in an instant if there was one.

Living with a disability is a struggle.

Hating yourself is a fate worse than death.

It’s one thing to struggle sometimes.
It’s another to spend every minute of struggle feeling ashamed, feeling unworthy, mentally tearing yourself down for struggling, for needing help, for not being normal.
What good is it to have adapted equipment, accomodations, medications, if you feel weak and worthless every time you take a pill? If you feel inadequate because you can’t do things the same way others do? If you hate the sight of the things that help you live your life because they mark you as abnormal?

Being filled with shame, every day, for things we can’t change, is a fate worse than death.

The “acceptance, not awareness” perspective, the “neurodiversity” perspective, is this:

We can live with being disabled but we can’t live with hating ourselves for it.

No amount of hatred and anger and defiance will cure us when medical treatments can’t.

Acceptance, freedom from self-hatred and shame, will help us live the lives we have.