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Not sure if this belongs in #neisvoid but something that I didn’t realize until recently is that I’ve had diagnosed chronic illnesses for most of my life but just refused to believe I was sick, which probably created a lot of the guilt and shame I feel around being sick.
I’ve always had relatively invisible disabilities- migraines, mental illness, and I think when I was younger I was more willing to stand up for myself. But when I got sick and had to do ECT I think my parents were so ableist about the whole thing it really created a self-hatred.
While doing ECT I experienced what it was like to be clearly impaired. Everyone around me treated me like I was dumb and that I was a child even though I was 21. While a lot of my cognitive impairment went away, it really left a mark on me to be treated that way by society.
I’ve been experiencing relatively bad POTS symptoms for the past 15 months, but in an effort to hide my disability I was vomiting on side streets, not really leaving my house, and just being that person who is “too lazy to stand.”
The thing that is most amazing about the chronic illness community is to find out that the internalized ableism that I created as a result of the intense ableism I’ve experienced is both normal and not something to be ashamed of. You have to accept it to work through it.
When I found out I had dysautonomia I was terrified because I realized that I was someone who would benefit from treatment that would make me “visibly disabled” such as a port for infusions or mobility aids like a wheelchair for grocery shopping. Mostly I felt alone in this.
Finding community connected me with all of the other 25 year olds grappling with the fact that they need to borrow their grandma’s rollator but also helped me come to terms with myself.
I think for so long I’ve been at war with my body, punishing myself for my chronic pain and fatigue. I’ve always pushed myself (usually past my limits) to be ~normal~ and then hated myself when I couldn’t achieve that, but fighting with my body was never going to be the answer.
Having compassion for myself is something I’ve never been good at, but it’s that compassion that will destroy my internalized ableism and allow me to begin to heal.
