Anna - The Chronic Oversharer

Chronically ill writer, performer, maker. Trying to make sense of things from my bed.

Launched 2 months ago

Anna - The Chronic Oversharer

Anna - The Chronic Oversharer

@thechronicoversharers

Chronically ill writer, performer, maker. Trying to make sense of things from my bed.

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Anna - The Chronic OversharerJun 14

On Getting Sick and Losing Friends

I sometimes think disabled people are forced into a more honest relationship with reality than the culture around us. We cannot endlessly pretend our bodies are machines. We cannot always override pain through discipline and positive thinking. We are confronted, over and over again, with the fact that human beings are fragile. Maybe this is part of why disability makes people uncomfortable. We interrupt the fantasy capitalism sells us: that worth can be earned and optimized through enough effort.

Dynamic disability confuses people because our culture believes suffering must be consistent to be real.

If you can walk now, they question the wheelchair. If you have one good week, they forget the six bad months.

People want illness to be visually obvious and narratively simple because ambiguity makes them uncomfortable.

But many disabled bodies are ambiguous. Many disabled lives fluctuate. And that fluctuation does not make us dishonest.

ME is underplaying the daily torture of a body on fire, because you can’t afford to keep alienating people.

May is ME Awareness Month

I Am An Angry Young Woman

If you fear disabled people, you fear yourself. Because one day, your body will need care too.

Surviving as a disabled person so often comes down to whether you can make your pain legible to a system that benefits from pretending it can’t see you.

Please Don’t Abandon Your Disabled Friends

There’s a quiet violence in being told "you’re so strong" when what you actually needed was support. Strength becomes the compliment we give when we don’t plan to help.

Acceptance isn't a performance.