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i NEED you to remember this: you are allowed to be angry at your doctors. you are allowed to be furious. you are allowed to be mad at your nurses and technicians and neurologists and psychiatrists and medical assistants. they are not god. they are human beings and they work in a system that wears them raw, and that is unfair, but it isn't an excuse to treat you badly. i'm not necessarily saying you should throw a brick through the window of their car, but you can, should, must be angry with them for ignoring you, demeaning you, dehumanizing you, dismissing you, acting like you're lying, talking only about your weight, failing to acknowledge you past your symptoms, etc etc etc. you are an equal to your doctor. you are a human being and so are they. do not treat them as beyond reproach. you are allowed to be angry at your doctors.
"it will get better" they told me, aged 11, when puberty really kicked in and felt extremely dysphoric about my body, but didn't know what it was yet, and also got bullied for not being truly either gender.
"it will get better" they told 13 year old me, now aware of what dysphoria was, but still suicidal because of it, and felt terrible for not being accepted as a real boy.
"it will get better" they told 15 year me, who just got sexually assaulted for being trans, as well as missing lots of school(and social development) for being constantly in the hospital to navigate the medical gatekeeping for being trans.
"it will get better" they told 16 year me, still freshly traumatized from being sexually assaulted, and now disabled due to medical abuse and neglect from doctors, as well as failing school due to said disability.
"it will get better" they told 17 year old me, who was getting abused at home, while going to school and working my ass off at a minimum wage job, trying to save whatever I could while also trying to sustain myself.
"it will get better" they told 18 year me, still being abused and barely graduating high school, while fighting with my mom to let me attend the college I want, while still not having fully recovered from being temporarily disabled.
"it will get better" they told 19 year old me, now living on college campus, stuck doing a degree I don't truly want, but my parents won't let me chance. I'm succumbing to depression, adhd, and anxiety, but who cares. My body has most of its functions back but will never be the same. Still dysphoric and suicidal every day despite transitioning.
It will get better. When, my love, when? It's almost been a decade of being suicidal every single day, as well as being abused and to a degree, disabled. Some people's foundation for life crumbles, I didn't have one to begin with.
on top of that, a decade is a pretty long time. Would you expect a person to undergo cancer treatment for 10 years, only for it to not be solved? You'd feel sympathetic, right? Maybe even feel bad for them? You wish their suffering would just be over.. Why is this any different? Why am I suddenly "just not strong enough" or "just try harder"?
I'm genuinely convinced it'll never get better. I don't really have any (easy) method of... you know what, but I still want to "commit" every single day. I genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, believe it will never get better.
Trans & disabled community: "you shouldn't have to proof to anyone you're valid! Fuck the medical system and doctors mistreating us! You don't need proof of your suffering, only you know your true pain!"
Me: "Well puberty blockers caused me to severely suffer, cause issues I still suffer from years later, and nobody ever beliefs me and sweeps my issues under the rug despite having suffered a great number, and still am." Trans & disabled community: "Okay but like, where's the proof? Why didn't you ever tell that to the doctors?* Actually research proofs that is literally impossible. Have you ever considered you might be the issue here? Like did you even listen to your doctors? Maybe you had some underlying condition?" Me: *stares into the camera as if it's the office* * I did alert the doctors to this, but they either refused to examine me, or also told me that what I was suffering from was simply impossible according to research.
Not the “oh Einstein was probably autistic” or the sanitized Helen Keller story. but this history disabled people have made and has been made for us.
Teach them about Carrie Buck, who was sterilized against her will, sued in 1927, and lost because “Three generations of imbeciles [were] enough.”
Teach them about Judith Heumann and her associates, who in 1977, held the longest sit in a government building for the enactment of 504 protection passed three years earlier.
Teach them about all the Baby Does, newborns in 1980s who were born disabled and who doctors left to die without treatment, who’s deaths lead to the passing of The Baby Doe amendment to the child abuse law in 1984.
Teach them about the deaf students at Gallaudet University, a liberal arts school for the deaf, who in 1988, protested the appointment of yet another hearing president and successfully elected I. King Jordan as their first deaf president.
Teach them about Jim Sinclair, who at the 1993 international Autism Conference stood and said “don’t mourn for us. We are alive. We are real. And we’re here waiting for you.”
Teach about the disability activists who laid down in front of buses for accessible transit in 1978, crawled up the steps of congress in 1990 for the ADA, and fight against police brutality, poverty, restricted access to medical care, and abuse today.
Teach about us.