I went back and read it a second time because I wasn't certain what was getting flagged for 'disablist language'. I think it's the segment at the end around 'To live with a chronic illness is to be controlled by your own fear' and being put on the scrapheap, but I wouldn't call that disablist, so much as entirely understandable*. OTOH it's the kind of thing that might make a normie editor uncomfortable enough to call it disablist.
* It's the line I most disagree with. I'd reword it, having been there, as "To live with a chronic illness is to faced daily by the question, does my disability control me, or do I control my disability?" And I've lived on both sides of the answer.
I suspect some of it has to do with the idea of "fixing", and the line about "scrap metal masquerading as a human".
But the thing is, the thing is (I want to take her hand and say this, very gently), chronic illness doesn't have to mean living in fear. It doesn't. I promise. I've been there, I've been so afraid of hurting more and of getting iller, I've been so choked with fear I didn't even realise I was afraid until a treatment briefly made it so I wouldn't hurt and it lifted, but you can't -- you can't live like that. Sooner or later the fear passes through you and you are what is left, if you can find a way to ease its passing. You don't have to live like this.
I think some of it is: being ill ends up requiring you to give a lot of access to your body to a lot of strangers, who'll measure it and mark it and scar it, and it can end up being very difficult to feel like you live here. Things that ground in the body -- and for me, particularly things where I invite someone to mark it, where I choose that actively and joyfully and deliberately in the knowledge that I won't suffer if I don't -- are a way of saying, well, this. My tattoo is a mark someone else -- a stranger -- left on me: but it was one I chose and one I invited.
When you hide yourself (because you're queer, or trans, or whatever), and then you end up hiding from yourself, disowning your embodiment, as a way to survive -- well. Self-injury is something I choose, and a way that I write myself back into my body. Scars are beautiful. Ink is another way for me to write myself back in, defiant. It's a way to feel -- not necessarily that I control my body (as opposed to it controlling me), but a way to feel like maybe we can work in partnership. I promise to stay present; it promises to do its best.
Which is not to say that nobody without that intersecting set of experiences can feel this way, or that everybody with some (or all) of these experiences does, but -- does that make any more sense? The idea I keep trying to get at is anchors. I'm happy to try to find more words if you'd like me to.
yes. this is why it's probably a very good thing I don't have any money. I'd be covered in metal and/or ink.
(Rach was much more ink-driven. I, otoh, am much more likely to put spiky metal things in myself. I do want to motherfucking get the fucking wrist tattoo, but that would probably take a miracle.)
I am so pleased and relieved I've got my ink. (I am, of course, planning more.) And the more likely it looks that I won't be spending lots of time in metal-free clean labs the more I'm thinking about options for facemetal...
I have the 3 tattoos and 17 piercings inside. XD Debating if I can squeeze out money to get one of my facial piercings out here when I get my financial aid refund -- I have 2 in my left eyebrow, one on the left side of my nose and snakebites and I miss them. I mean, I feel connected to this body in a way Rachel never was, but I need to put something in it so it's quietly going "this is Oleander.", even if nobody out here ever knows that it's saying that.
(if that makes sense. XD)
We have our ear lobes double-pierced, but never wear earrings, mainly because our body reacts to most metals. And, ofc, neither my roommates nor I can get the titanium CBRs I have in my thick earlobes. The most popular piercing place here charges $5/piercing to put them in. -eyeroll-
We have 2 tattoos on the body. One is Mae's and I'd like to get it removed. She was Wiccan and got a pentacle. Nobody since her has been Wiccan, so... I'd kind of like to get rid of it. The other physical one is ours -- a flowered vine going around our left ankle.
(The "house symbol" is a vine -- we all woke up with an ivy leaf tattooed on us somewhere, though they faded in time. Mind you, Mae got the vine tattoo out here before she acknowledged us, so we were highly amused when everyone woke up with a vine on them. But we had many pages of drawings by different people of ivy leaves, so it was hugely like "duh".)
Mine was where my Chaos star is now -- about where our back goes to shit out here, so like at the L4-L5 range. And then I have my kids names wrapped up my spine [which I count as one tattoo for simplicity's sake] and a Wolf-related tattoo on my left clavicle up to my shoulder, for adoption/religious reasons.
Ofc, if I had the money, I would run to the highest rated local tatt shop and get my broken DNA bracelet done on my right wrist. I'd also probably work a tiny Chaos star into it, over where we have a significant scar. But that's neither here nor there, since I'm broke. :P
(We agreed after we became uncomfortable with Mae's tattoo that we wouldn't get any physical tattoos that didn't apply to the system as a whole. We can't guarantee that people will be here to the body dies, so it's really best not to leave anything that could become a painful or awkward reminder. The DNA tattoo obvs applies to the ridiculous DNA this body has and, since I've chosen to take control of this body until death [that sounds worse than it is! but, y'know, trufax. -handwave-], the Chaos star would be an anchor.)
(yes, all of this makes sense, and I am honoured to have had it shared with me! I do not have a great surfeit of words rn, but -- I don't think any worse of you as an individual or you collectively, if that were something that was worried about, and -- yes. sense. it is made.)
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2016-01-28 07:15 pm (UTC)I went back and read it a second time because I wasn't certain what was getting flagged for 'disablist language'. I think it's the segment at the end around 'To live with a chronic illness is to be controlled by your own fear' and being put on the scrapheap, but I wouldn't call that disablist, so much as entirely understandable*. OTOH it's the kind of thing that might make a normie editor uncomfortable enough to call it disablist.
* It's the line I most disagree with. I'd reword it, having been there, as "To live with a chronic illness is to faced daily by the question, does my disability control me, or do I control my disability?" And I've lived on both sides of the answer.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-01-30 11:56 pm (UTC)But the thing is, the thing is (I want to take her hand and say this, very gently), chronic illness doesn't have to mean living in fear. It doesn't. I promise. I've been there, I've been so afraid of hurting more and of getting iller, I've been so choked with fear I didn't even realise I was afraid until a treatment briefly made it so I wouldn't hurt and it lifted, but you can't -- you can't live like that. Sooner or later the fear passes through you and you are what is left, if you can find a way to ease its passing. You don't have to live like this.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-01-31 04:35 pm (UTC)I remember feeling wierd and unsettled one day - took all morning to realise it was because I wasn't actually in pain at the time. Things normalise.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-01-28 07:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-01-30 11:52 pm (UTC)When you hide yourself (because you're queer, or trans, or whatever), and then you end up hiding from yourself, disowning your embodiment, as a way to survive -- well. Self-injury is something I choose, and a way that I write myself back into my body. Scars are beautiful. Ink is another way for me to write myself back in, defiant. It's a way to feel -- not necessarily that I control my body (as opposed to it controlling me), but a way to feel like maybe we can work in partnership. I promise to stay present; it promises to do its best.
Which is not to say that nobody without that intersecting set of experiences can feel this way, or that everybody with some (or all) of these experiences does, but -- does that make any more sense? The idea I keep trying to get at is anchors. I'm happy to try to find more words if you'd like me to.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-01-28 08:16 pm (UTC)(Rach was much more ink-driven. I, otoh, am much more likely to put spiky metal things in myself. I do want to motherfucking get the fucking wrist tattoo, but that would probably take a miracle.)
(no subject)
Date: 2016-01-29 09:06 pm (UTC)oh, look, a box of tl;dr! XD
Date: 2016-01-29 09:54 pm (UTC)(if that makes sense. XD)
We have our ear lobes double-pierced, but never wear earrings, mainly because our body reacts to most metals. And, ofc, neither my roommates nor I can get the titanium CBRs I have in my thick earlobes. The most popular piercing place here charges $5/piercing to put them in. -eyeroll-
We have 2 tattoos on the body. One is Mae's and I'd like to get it removed. She was Wiccan and got a pentacle. Nobody since her has been Wiccan, so... I'd kind of like to get rid of it. The other physical one is ours -- a flowered vine going around our left ankle.
(The "house symbol" is a vine -- we all woke up with an ivy leaf tattooed on us somewhere, though they faded in time. Mind you, Mae got the vine tattoo out here before she acknowledged us, so we were highly amused when everyone woke up with a vine on them. But we had many pages of drawings by different people of ivy leaves, so it was hugely like "duh".)
Mine was where my Chaos star is now -- about where our back goes to shit out here, so like at the L4-L5 range. And then I have my kids names wrapped up my spine [which I count as one tattoo for simplicity's sake] and a Wolf-related tattoo on my left clavicle up to my shoulder, for adoption/religious reasons.
Ofc, if I had the money, I would run to the highest rated local tatt shop and get my broken DNA bracelet done on my right wrist. I'd also probably work a tiny Chaos star into it, over where we have a significant scar. But that's neither here nor there, since I'm broke. :P
(We agreed after we became uncomfortable with Mae's tattoo that we wouldn't get any physical tattoos that didn't apply to the system as a whole. We can't guarantee that people will be here to the body dies, so it's really best not to leave anything that could become a painful or awkward reminder. The DNA tattoo obvs applies to the ridiculous DNA this body has and, since I've chosen to take control of this body until death [that sounds worse than it is! but, y'know, trufax. -handwave-], the Chaos star would be an anchor.)
Re: oh, look, a box of tl;dr! XD
Date: 2016-01-30 11:52 pm (UTC)