Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body

by Rebekah Taussig

Some days, I feel too vulnerable to leave my house, too fed up to subject myself to the gamble of strangers interacting with me, too tired to fight to occupy a corner of space. Inaccessibility over time tells me that I do not matter, am not wanted, do not belong. This land wasn’t made for me. So I stay in, keep to myself, avoid, cancel plans, carry anxiety in each fold and bend of my body, feel very alone and trapped and helpless. I also cope. I write, laugh, develop deep friendships with a safe few, find the movie theaters and coffee shops I can access and go to them one hundred times in a row, and sometimes I allow myself to be lifted up and down a flight of stairs. There are days I talk over the loudspeaker that says I’m not welcome, when I refuse to be invisible and silent. Sometimes, I even forget how hard this is. All of this is true at the same time.