flurg.

I just got back from an appt with A. We did something a little differently this week. We used trigger-point therapy (on my neck / back) and energy work to release some of my pain (physical) and fear / negativity at the same time. The trigger point technique is a good match for this idea of release because it gives me something to focus on and then let go. When we were done and I came to all the way I thought to myself, "Huh. I really feel different today." I see A pretty much every week and many times, I leave feeling rearranged but still hurting, if that makes any sense. Today there was a marked difference in my thoughts as I left the yoga studio. The studio exits onto a very un-yoga-like scene. The south side flats are (is?) simply bustling with drunks and brimming with gutter punks. I often feel my chill vibe evaporate before I get half a block to the corner. Today though I was feeling unusually serene. Every time I tapped my cane I thought in my head I exist you exist I exist you exist and it was all very.

I think that put me in the headspace to receive the following message. After A, I stopped by Dairy Queen and had one of their evil-on-so-many-levels Confetti Cake Blizzards. These are Satan's own crack and it's good they're only around for a month. Whilst eating, I surf the internet on my phone. And recently I've been seeking out the pages / blogs /whathaveyou of other poets with disabilities because... if I can't have an actual in-the-flesh mentor, I'll read a lot and see what the experiences of others are. I came upon this column by Ona Gritz on the Literary Mama website. It's called "Guardian Angels of the Staircase." Gritz has CP. She live in a walk-up with her husband and teenage son. The column begins when Gritz is in the supermarket and she does the thing that everyone does who commutes not-by-car. Essentially told herself as she was shopping I'm totally keeping these bags light enough so I can carry them home okay and then surprise! Exceedingly heavy bags. She gets to her building and is sizing up the daunting task of taking all those grocery bags up four flights of stairs when she sees people she knows coming down the stairs.

"Do you need help?" the woman asked. My first instinct was to refuse politely and struggle up the stairs. After all, they'd just come down five flights and were on their way out. But then I thought about all the times Dan answered that same question with an enthusiastic, That would be great! Being blind, he'd never be able to live his rich, busy life as both a poet and an access technology consultant without accepting help now and then. As a physically disabled woman living with an elevator that's been out of service until further notice for the past six weeks, I've come to realize the same is true of me. 


I was like wha----? She's so .... positive. About the receiving of help. She takes the woman's help. The only reason she considers not taking it is because she feels too polite. Need I remind my loyal readers, that whenever people ask me if I need help, my first thought is wtf bitches, do you think I'm incompetent? 


After relating another incident where a neighbor helps her carry heavy stuff up their stairs, she ends that anecdote with : 


"It wasn't all that heavy," he shrugged, flushing, making me realize he preferred not to be recognized for what he'd done. Was it shyness? Maybe in part. But more than that, he'd simply helped me because he could and because I needed it. Neither for acknowledgment nor for praise. One perk of disability is that I get to see the best in people.


One. Perk. Of disability. Is that she gets. To see. The. Best. In people. I was reading and in my head going ?! ?! ?! I was thinking about my own experiences and, well, how different they were. Not that I have had only negative experiences, but that it's been ... rocky. Mixed. I would never make the statement that having a disability means I get to see the best in people. And I thought about what A has told me before, how people's reactions mirror my own energy and how I can "show" them how I want to be treated by projecting an aura of comfortability with myself. Which I kind of get and kind of don't. Part of me is like, yes, that is true. And the other, larger part of me is like, it is not my motherfucking responsibility to show people how they should treat me. Especially strangers. 


You can see I have some anger issues here. Like an entire landfill of them. Honestly, the only person I've ever truly felt comfortable asking for help from is Mike, and that comes with its residual feeling of guilt, because I worry that I rely on him too much. 


It's a short column. Gritz ends it with :


The medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides considered anonymous giving one of the highest acts -- a commandment filled for its own sake. The one form of giving he placed above it is where the altruist finds a way to communicate that she or he and the person in need remain equals. I've definitely needed more help since the day the elevator went bust. Often, it's my family who jumps in. [. . . . ] But just as often, it's been my neighbors, many of whom I hardly know. Yet not once have I been made to feel like that poor crippled single mom on the fourth floor. Life's been a little harder for all of us in these long weeks of living in a walk-up. We're a little wearier for it but, on the upside, maybe a little thinner too. Most of all, we're in it together and that's never a bad thing.


I love this idea of "where the altruist finds a way to communicate that she or he and the person in need remain equals." I definitely feel shitty and "crippled" asking for help. Or even contemplating asking for help. Part of that may come from the other person, but part of that is coming from me. I don't know how to separate the two out, so that I can work on the me part. There's a whole lot of anger tangling these two negative aspects of helping. I will try and enumerate.


1) Most of the time, the question "Do you need help doing X?" angers me when it's a) from a stranger and b) quite clear to me (and I feel should be clear to the other person), that I don't need it. 
2) An example of this is, no man is catcalling at me anymore now that I'm using my cane, but a slightly higher class of man (you can read that as, less drunk) comes up to me and asks me if I need help crossing the street. Think about it. It's always men. And always a certain type of man. I want to ask them if I was a blind man would you consider me capable of crossing this street? And / or if I was a little old lady with a walker would you consider me capable of crossing this street? 
3) As a kid I was mainstreamed. I will say I was aggressively mainstreamed. And I didn't want it any other way. I've covered this before. I don't think I knew what the other ways were.
4) My dad has this kind of paranoid (is that the right word? I don't know) streak. As a kid, he was always warning me about people who were gonna take advantage of me. I'm not saying that these warnings necessarily came in the context of my disability... they sort of came all the time. And whenever he wanted / wants to encourage me to ask for help he always says use people! use them!
5) I have stranger issues.
6) I have man-stranger issues.
7) I still have not found a good place to put all this anger.
8) I didn't even realize how much anger I had for most of my life. Like, until maybe two years ago. But it's been accumulating for all the years previous to that. 


This list makes me want to cry. This list makes me want to ask a higher power to please send me some positive helping experiences, or allow me to pay attention to the ones that already exist. I wish I could trust the world more. This anger is so heavy to carry. But I can't trust. I can't bend. I'm just waiting to get slapped down again. These voices are my inner dialogue.