A new phase of life…as an endangered species
A week ago it became evident to me it was no longer working. The irony of the announcement being made at the beginning of #DisabilityPrideMonth is not lost on me. Our paths and perspectives over these years have become so different. Our values, once so aligned, have diverged to the point where when I look at you, I feel like I don’t even know you anymore.
You’ve been there for me, literally, my entire life. You watched me while I grew inside my mom’s tummy, with a nervous excitement. You celebrated my arrival into our community with tremendous joy and hope, a way all babies should be welcomed in the world. 32 year and 34 years later you welcomed my son and my daughter in much the same way, though a change started happening.
You let someone in to our relationship. Someone who saw me as a curiosity. As a problem to solve. Who looked at my body and found nothing but fault. Who looked at me not as a brilliant and vivacious person who mattered on this planet, because we all matter, but as a profit line on a on a budget. An incorrect line of code instead of a member of a community that exists all over the planet, with a robust history and culture.
You actually started gaslighting me about this. Telling me what I saw very clearly happening, was not happening. That this third party was not driving a wedge in our relationship. You told me I didn’t understand at first, but you’d help me. And gradually, as time went on, you got angry with me. You told me that my pride in myself, the nurturing of our beloved community, was hurtful and that I was the problem (literally, you said this).
You told me this party was benevolent, while they stole our stories and manipulated them for financial and material profit. You told me they wanted progress, while they they never sought to address the problems we asked for help with, instead they just wanted to make me taller. Something I never asked for, something I never wanted.
You, the safe space, the place where we were told our bodies were beautiful. Where we mattered. Where we could be leaders. Where we could dream.
You sold us out to the pharmaceutical industrial complex.
So now, over fifty years after its founding by A LITTLE PERSON, for the preservation, support, and social engagement of LITTLE PEOPLE, you’re shrugging at the eradication of your own people. Just as you said it was decades away in the first place, you’re lying. Just as you said they wouldn’t abuse our trust, that it was safer to let them in than to push them out, you’re lying. You took their money and feel NO accountability for their actions. You lie, lie, and lie.
And because of the lies in our relationship, in November I will become an endangered species. Don’t try to tell me I won’t. You haven’t been honest throughout the whole thing and I refuse to be convinced otherwise.
If you’re going to be make me an endangered species, then damnit, I will be a buffalo. and I will run towards this storm, and not away from it. I will fight for the preservation of my community, of my children, and their children. I will stand for our people while you serve them up on a platter.
This is not about progress. This is about eugenics.
“First and foremost, we are people. We aren’t sub-human, we didn’t leap from the pages of a storybook or from an enchanted forest. We are people with all the hopes, dreams, passions, and faults of everyone else. We are your brothers, your daughters, your friends. AND WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO SURVIVE.”
