disabling label
Sunday, January 08, 2012 @12:04:15 AM
Yesterday I was reviewing my diagnosis report for the first time since I received it 3 years ago. It was my 3rd diagnosis. The first 2 were fine but were considered not definitive enough by other professional to be considered valid. I think the other diagnosis were in variance to what people view in me as I look "normal" to others. Now I have no idea what normal is and I truly think it is silly to pursue a concept called normal. However I feel like this mindview is a consensus of one.
So when I was reviewing this latest and definative report, I was struck with how my wife, sister and mentor made sure to emphasize my peculiarities, oddities and wierd behavioral features. In short they made me look looney tunes.
They knew and I do too, that to play up my struggles and abnormal mannerism, I can be thought of as having a disability, It's a game. There is this mindset that to have a disability is to plainly know that the individual in question is beyond question not one of us.
Well who is us? This us is the collective of behaviors that are agreed upon as normal. Everybody buys into conforming to this arbitrary standard with the understanding that if you do not, you will be thought of as crazy.
So when I persisted in having an acceptable and recognizable diagnosis of a mental disability; what I was actually seeking was a manifesto that I am so different from the collective of normal people that It would be clear to others that I have big time problems and issues.
Naturally the term issues is a metaphor for being crazy/defective. Now once and for all, I am branded as a misfit that does not work correctly.
SO IS THIS WHAT IT REALLY MEANS TO BE DIS-ABLED ?
Not if you ask me. To be disabled is not a recognition that the individual is variant to a population of acceptable behaviors. Disability is much more subtle than that. Disability is defined by the heart and intention of the individual. Disablity is defined by the lack of concern what prescribed norms and roles we are designed to maintain. If one is determine to live freely of the constraints of what normal is, as the price of being true to their beliefs and aspirations, then they will be seen as crazy.
Normal people are supposed to sell their inhibitions to the gatekeeper of normality. In exchange they are ruled normal by society and they receive the blessing of widespread approval. What they do not receive is respect. Not the respect that comes with a capitol R. What they do not display is courage.
Michael Jackson was one such person that lived sans unabashed inhibitions. His dance was completely without pretense. "What would they think about my steps and mis-steps". There were no time and no space for that. He dance and He dance and his life is defined by dancing to the song solely heard in His head. MJ heard that he was crazy all of his life and his peculiarities and oddities were played up by those who carried disdain for his non-conformist ways. People who spoke of how odd he was-laughed. Their mirth was designed to assure them and their brethren within the club of acceptables how pityable Jackson is for rejecting a desire to simply "behave or act right".
In a previous blog you read my contention that Micheal Jackson was one of us on the Autism Spectrum of Disorders. Here again this is how we are treated when we are comfortable with being "different"
ironic isn't it ?; In this bastion of plurality we have a population of people whom become vilified once our behaviors discloses our differences. Worse yet the vilification is intensified exponentially once we are recognized as being comfortable in our difference.
Maybe we should not consult my oppinion. Because to do so would make us have to seriously, seriously question our collective consciousness as it regards the significance of being be mentally dis-abled. Maybe I should not be given a forum to convince the entire population dealing with and maintaining a taunt velvet robe between us normal people and us distubed people that the line is loosening before our eyes.
Maybe I should care what people would think about my discoveries and keep it to my self and not disturb a division of a hundred years that has comforted those on the outside that pitifully believe you can convince people that adhering to an arbitrary standard of normal actually makes one so.
Hush ! These are dangerous thoughts that must not be read and discussed.
They are only allowable if one is crazy !
