And then this happened.

Sometimes these incidents seem unbloggable. I wonder why I do this. The documentation of them. They are humiliating. Also, I think, people have worse problems, and don't bitch about them. I was raised like that. To suck it up. I'm sharing this because I feel like the more disability narratives that are out there, the faster they will spin into a thread, weave into a net. The net will connect us, and only good things can happen from that.

I might be sounding loopy right now. That's because after this happened I was so shattered that I just came home, cried for two hours and lay in bed thinking for another hour or so. I held out as long as I could. Then I drugged myself. Don't worry: prescription. Everything above board here.

My energy has been off for a few days now. It had been better, until about two weeks after getting back from Vegas. I felt good. I dyed my hair this crazy magenta. I love it. I think to myself, now people have a choice what to stare at. The cane or the hair. I can pretend it's the hair. 

I know... I stick out for many reasons. I'm an embodied contradiction. I always have been. I like to think there's beauty, somewhere, in being so... what is the word.. confounding? I've made many friends, and they seem to support me in all my ... originality. I am happy that there are people I can share my true self with. My sense of community grows by the day, and I'm grateful. Especially since exiting my last job. I can't believe I've only been not-teaching for six months. It feels like a year. And I also can't believe I'm stepping back into the classroom in about two weeks. Yipes. Whew, tangent.

Anyway, my energy was better. Then yesterday, it sort of ... tanked. I get impatient. I'm trying to rebuild six years lost (not entirely, but mostly lost) of poetry community, of academic community where I will be respected and my gifts will be wanted. But I get impatient. I get impatient and then I let my anger get to me. 

Anger, from me, was not an acceptable emotion to have, growing up. You got hit for it. Notice how I switched into the second person there? Yeah, it's still sensitive. You know that scenario, where the teenager stomps up the stairs and slams her door screaming something like, "I hate you," because her parents wouldn't let her borrow the car. That didn't happen in my house. For many reasons. Also because why would I ever borrow a car? Ha, bad bad humor.

I'm in a bad humor right now. I'm trying to tell this story, but it's not coming out right. I have mentioned that in my neighborhood, people don't just do the stare-and-look-away thing, or the move-to-the-other-half-of-the-sidewalk thing. They get all up in your business. See there again, I switched to the second person. 

I do not see many people with visible disabilities in my neighborhood. I don't know where they are. Inside? I would say it is a working class neighborhood. At least the people who aren't on welfare are working. There's a lot of people struggling with addiction as well.

I once came very close to applying for SSDI (basically welfare). Something or someone came to my rescue and I did not. I remember though, how that felt. I also once almost lived in a group home because I could not pull my shit together. I bet you didn't know that. 

So, in my neighborhood, people tend to do things like micromanage my bus embarkation/ disembarking. And my street crossings. It happens so frequently now that I'm really starting to weary of it. It feels like harassment. I want to carry a thought bubble above my head that says SAVE YOUR HELP. In the other neighborhoods I visit, I do not have this problem. As much. 

After a morning full of these incidents sprinkled throughout, I am (I think) headed home for a break and then out to do another event tonight. I get off the bus at my intersection. A man comes up from behind me and says, "You crossin?" I ignore him. 

I ignore him because I am so so SO sick of people asking me questions about what bus I'm waiting for or whether I need their help to do X. I covered this in previous blog posts. I would say 90% of them are men, who ask this. If I need help. Do I look like I need help? 

I'm so glad oversized sunglasses (think Jackie Kennedy) are still in style. I buy bigger and darker pairs each time I lose or break them. I look like an alien, in the mirror. I feel like my face is encased in a glamourous carapace. I try to keep my mouth neutral all the time. I am practicing a certain half-smile though, for pedestrians who are not assholes who acknowledge me as an equal or are kind to me in some way. And I'm writing a poem about the practicing. 

"You crossin?" he says again. No. Yes. Thank you. No. "Yes." My voice comes out harsh, like a bark. I don't turn my head to look at him. He could have been talking to five other people at the corner, but it was me. I knew it was me. In an instant he was at my side. My light turns green. I swing the cane into the street, start to cross. "Wait!" he says, and ... here's the thing that really set me off -- he puts his arm in front of me, to block my crossing of the street. 

I have written before about how I don't like strangers touching me. I'm not a snob. I genuinely have a bad neurological reaction to it. When people touch me, especially strangers, I make this awful half-screaming-half-yelping noise. I can't help it. 

The involuntary noise happened the other day on the bus. I ran into a girl as I was disembarking --not uncommon. I said I was sorry like three times and then she PINCHED me. I made the noise then, and felt so embarrassed. Also violated, and all the panic and disordered thoughts that come after.

It is not that hard to become my friend, but you will probably have to make the first move. I hug my friends. I hug my acquaintances. I warn them first. "I'm a hugger," with the implied statement and question, "Our meeting / parting meant something special to me. Can I please hug you now?" I think it is appropriate to ask before touching, especially if I have not touched someone before. 

So, a strange man has just done a worse thing than touching. A man has actually prevented me from moving through the world. Literally, with his arm, he has prevented this. And there is not a good reason. 

In the past, there was once a good reason. When at CMU, during finals season, I was once so tired I swore I could have lain down on the sidewalk and fallen asleep. I crossing the street, headed to a final and a man snatched me by the shoulder, back onto the sidewalk, out of the way of an accelerating bus. I was glad he did that. To me, that is appropriate touching. He asked if I was okay. I said yes and thanked him profusely. I enjoyed not getting hit by the bus and completing another semester. I was not using my cane then. 

At that point I'd never been introduced to a white cane. As a consequence of mainstreaming, I was given 18 years of specialized training, at the expense of the state of Pennsylvania and at some psychological expense to me, to function solely using the vision I have. As with many situations where one is vulnerable, the psychological expense one incurs, and the intellectual gains one makes, depend greatly on the quality of the actual human contact one receives. I had good mobility instructors, and bad ones.

Now I use the cane. I use the cane to see the ground so I can employ my usable vision to, for example, look for stoplights, and their color. Vehicles, and what their turn signals, their front wheels, may be doing. 

The good thing about stoplights and vehicles at an intersection is that they are most likely where you'd expect them to be. So my shred of vision and the object I'm seeking line up. I also use my ears to listen to the characteristics of the engine noise at the intersection. These things have become pretty routine, but I cross the street with a greater amount of concentration than perhaps the average person. This is why my friends who jay-walk, and want to take me with them on their death missions, freak me out.

When a man jumps in front of you, yells something at you, touches you, and bars you from moving, he is not where you expect him to be. I did not expect him there. My vision dances like a movie shot on a handheld camera by a drunk person. That is what my vision does, much of the time. It used to give me nauseating attacks of vertigo, when I was a kid. I threw up a lot. My mom thought I was "faking." Faking what? 

He has barred my path and this has set off more than panic. I've never screamed at a person in public before, for "helping." But this is, like, totally, this is off the chain. "What the fuck? Dude! He's got a red light! He's going to stop!" I don't know how much of this is coming out in words that another person can understand. My voice sounds underwater, to me. He backs away with that hands-up-I-surrender look and says... he really says this...

"Oh man. My bad! I thought you couldn't see!"

And now I have stepped from reality into post-modern land. I have stepped from the curb and I am in the middle of the intersection, of the cultural intersection, of the liminal intersection, of the literal intersection, while he backs up onto the sidewalk. I know this traffic light won't last forever but I am just... pinned in place by the utter -----

I cannot muster the words for what I need to say. I cannot get them out of my mouth. And later, when I cry for two hours so loud I fear the neighbors can hear me, saying "oh god" over and over... it is a little bit because he has touched me, but it is mostly because I am so inarticulate at this moment. I gesture like Vanna White at the full length of my cane. "I... I sort of... " the next word was either "can" or "can't." It doesn't matter which, because the truth is, I sort of can and I sort of can't. See.

However, even if my eyes are being all "can't" instead of "can," I can fucking handle it. If he thought I couldn't see, why does this still give him the right to interfere in my travels? I can sense that truck, perpendicular, to the left of me. I can't see the light or what color it is. I'm done with him. I think I'm done with the fucking world. I charge ahead toward my destination, muttering fuckfuck fuck FUCK fuck fuck loudly and softly and loudly, so that I probably seem crack-addled myself, and I don't care.