I Do Not Have Bootstraps

Content Warning for: severe ableism, internalized ableism, sanism and internalized sanism, micro-agressions, macro-aggressions, institutionalized oppression,, institutionalized discrimination, societal scapegoating, emotional abuse, erasure, lack of goodness of fit, mental illnesses, other chronic illnesses, neuro-diversity, ableist language.

I grew up hearing, “everybody feels a little down sometimes,” and “nobody feels like doing things sometimes,” and a myriad of other phrases, followed by, “but you just have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps”.

I am here to tell you, I do not have bootstraps. Many people don’t.

Also, mental illnesses are emphatically not the same as, “feeling a little down sometimes.” Executive dysfunction is not the same as laziness (believe me, I am sometimes lazy — but I also have executive dysfunction and they are not the same) even though it is often mistaken for laziness.

Telling someone who has depression, Borderline Personality Disorder, or a host of other mental illnesses to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” is like telling someone who is legally blind to just focus and if they really apply themselves, they’ll be able to read that tiny sign across the street.

Telling someone with executive dysfunction and/or a chronic illness and/or a learning disability that that they are lazy and just not trying is like telling the person with diabetes who is currently hypoglycemic that their dizziness, fear, panic, paranoia, slurred speech, and complete inability to form a coherent thought are because they just aren’t trying hard enough.

I have had enough of that.

I grew up hearing, “you and [x person] will be dead by the time you’re [18, 20, 21, 23, 25, 27, 30].

I grew up hearing that I could live and function like a normal person in society, if only I just “applied myself”. Sometimes, but not always, I was told that I could do this “with a little help”. Sometimes I was told that I would always need help, others that I wasn’t. I was also told that the person I lived with could not live on his own, someimes without help and sometimes at all.

I was told that if we could not manage this, we should “be comitted,” that we should live in a group home or a mental hospital or a nursing home for the rest of our lives.

I was told that we were lazy, crazy, greedy, selfish, entitled.

I was told in ways large and small, in so many words and in less words with heavy implications that productivity and blending in is the measure of a person — that a person who works a day job that is socially sanctioned by society and considered “real” work has value and a person who does not and people who can not do have value. I was told and shown that they do not deserve dignity, respect, or any sembelance of pleasure. I was told and shown that looking and sounding just like everyone else was the most important thing, that what society approves of is good and right, regardless of whether or not it is and that the goal must be to fit in and pass for normal — if I didn’t, it was my fault, I was a failure, and I deserved the mistreatment that I got.

No more.

The people who believed these things will not stop believing them, and I cannot make them, though I can try (but I have found it over many years to be an exercise in futility and frustration). And it will take me perhaps a lifetime to undo the damage and internalized ableism these beliefs caused. But I can dispute these beliefs. I can fight them in my own head and by disagreeing with those who hold them whenever I have the energy to.

I can call a spade a spade. These thoughts and beliefs are emotional abuse. This abuse is sanctioned by society and so takes place on societal scale.

I am not willing to accept being the scapegoat so the self-righteous can stroke their egos. No more.

I dispute these erroneous beliefs.

Special thanks to my transgender* community, especially where it intersects with the disabilty rights community and also to my Gods, especially Loki, for helping me begin to see how much ableism I have internalized — despite inherently feeling how wrong it was and spending much of my life fighting it every step of the way. Thank you, and thank You, a million times thank you and thank You.