I'M SOMEWHERE ELSE

so, I'll come out and say this: Christianity/disability = OTP for life.

Maybe I mean religion in general but I'm not going to assume I know other religions enough to make that judgment.

I know that a lot of disabled people are really offended by the idea that being around disabled people is a big spiritual lesson. But I feel that it is for me, and that being disabled is a big spiritual lesson, also.

So much of what we think we want and need, or need to be, are just things we've constructed. So when we can't do the things we think we must do, then we have to see that all of this is not objectively real. In the most terrible periods of my life, my eyes have had to unfocus to survive and it becomes all about color, sleep, crushes, laughing for a minute, the sky, finding something on the ground, really small pieces of Love.

As I have said, I can often hold on to what I'm told I need to be, which is I guess um--what an embarrassing phrase--my blessing and my curse, and I guess the curse of the "hf," the "barely disabled," the "invisibly disabled," blah blah blah. I don't have to let go of all of it although of course this puts me into a constant state of panic because holding on is almost impossible for me and I can feel myself almost losing it, and maybe I'll never let myself lose it, I don't know, or maybe I'll find a life that I can actually live.

I am glad that I have gotten to know people with severe and profound disabilities because I have learned that people who cannot do and/or have some of the things that are supposed to be mandatory are still people, and their life is still life; and then I see what's actually real, which is, you know, real life, not "success." So yeah. I have learned spiritual things from being around disabled people. Which I guess I'm not supposed to say. But it's difficult to avoid.

Something about being queer and disabled (and specifically Autistic) and Christian and semi-synesthesiac and whatever else is just that really brief connections and experiences always continue to exist for me after they're gone. I don't see there as being an end other than Love--many of the "means" are really that end, and the ends are just means to throw us into Love and sometimes tear us away. So I can keep my pieces of Love with me because I can always see them in time even when they are gone.

One of my classes in the UK was taught by a professor who kept making fun of Christianity and religion in general. She said, "You never see people wearing a gold electric chair around their neck."

Well, the thing about me is, of course I would. That's why I'm Christian. I know perfectly well that's what it is. And maybe being disabled has put me in this kind of twee-pop place of wanting to say, "Fuck yeah failure." Yes? Maybe?