on failing
tw: there is extensive talk on: fear of unemployment, self-harm, passive suicidality, and abuse.
As you can tell, I have not adhered to my previous post about writing about something that makes me glad to be alive or whatever, every day for the month of July. I made that little (but not so little) demand of myself because I was overwhelmed, depressed, and thought that having (1) thing that I could see the results of, daily, and by the end of the month, would make those things smaller, would make me feel different. Like, maybe not un-overwhelmed, certainly not un-depressed, but at least a overwhelming depressed that wore brighter clothes or at least had something more interesting to say.
(This is not the point, but ever since I got that one comment about how my writing is shit not just but especially because I use too many commas, it’s a personal goal of mine to,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, use more)
Odds are if I suddenly add a new project, it’s because I am increasingly overwhelmed by other responsibilities and I’m clinging on to the possibility that if I create my own project and succeed there, then there’s a chance that my inability to juggle five other other taxing projects will stop being such a glaring, searing neon-fire sign of my incompetence. Within the past few weeks, I’ve been asking myself if I can’t do this [insert task] because I am an incompetent failure of a human being or because I am not being accommodated for my disabilities. I’m starting to understand that conflating the two, has been one of the things hurting me most.
Internalized ableism really be sneaking up on a bitch, but at least this time we’re not on the tail end of the rope, hanging on by shredded hope. At least this time I can identify that people believe that because I’ve been able to mask as a neurotypical for so long, that I’m not really disabled, I’m just Neurotypical with A Quirk of Awkward.
Unravelling this for myself is a process that, really, I don’t think will ever end. Similar to coming out, there are so many things you have to unlearn, things that you clung to even though they left slices in your chest, because you needed them for survival. When I came out, I had to unlearn cisheteronormative thinking and understand what I truly care about instead of what I’ve been taught to care about. I’ve had to fail—a lot—to get closer to who I really am. And I still fail.
Unravelling internalized ableism has been similar, but a tad worse, because at least with being a nonbinary lesbian, no one in my family (so far) and few of my friends can tell me I’m doing that wrong. Also, I’ve struggled with knowing I’m hiding that part of myself for so long that I’ve spent years understanding the arguments that would be used to negate my sexuality and gender as real. With being autistic, (and it being comorbid with C-PTSD) it’s…harder. People believe they are experts in how social situations should be handled, in how long it should take a task to get done, in how getting things done should look. And I haven’t had years of practice to navigate how that just isn’t true for me. So I get stuck because I haven’t plotted a way through yet. With these people, there is no deviation from these beliefs and any sign of deviation is not a sign that there are multiple ways to do something but a sign that there is a flaw in the human that must be punished. I don’t know how to counterract that because by the time I realize it’s happening, it’s too late. It’s too late for people to care about it anymore. It’s too late for me to take time to contextualize the meaning of what happened and act in accordance with my new understanding. It’s too late because the world operates for abled people only and so I will always be too late.
I’ve been on probation at my job for the past thirty days as of last Friday. They don’t call it probation, there’s another dressier term that’s supposed to inspire confidence or whatever, but dressing things up doesn’t make the holder of the dress any less threatening. Although my work is “high-quality” when I am able to locate the pieces, I’m not working fast enough, I’m not doing enough to properly adhere to their metrics. This is not a job that I even knew existed until two years ago. I fell into this opportunity when I had to quit my service job due to the pandemic. Doing this regular job plus the mandatory college degree (where I had to fight for accommodations, my pronouns, and right name to be used every semester, multiple times a semester more to my detriment than to any possible use), was already wearing me out, but for them to put me on probation a month and a half before I’m set to graduate, a month and a half before I can finally take a breath from the ableist, transphobic, racist shit I’ve had to endure both at work and school not even taking into account shit in my personal life—had me turning to the thought process that I clung to as a kid—passive suicidality.
The thing is this (like all of us): I need healthcare. I need my meds, because without them, I cannot breathe. Sure, the ones to make my brain “right” are important but they don’t mean shit if I don’t have the inhalers that allow me to breathe in the first place. So, as with pretty much all working class people, the purpose of a job has always been to answer yes to the question of: will this keep me from dying?
When that answer is no longer a clear yes, you say, well I can’t control what they’ll do to me when they put me in this limbo of “will they keep me or won’t they keep me” that makes me wonder if I’m even worth keeping, but I can control how I leave this Earth because of it.
Obviously, that is a very narrow way of thinking. But, every time I’ve had a problem at work (usually due to my disability not being accommodated and/or being sexually abused by managers and coworkers), it is not my first instinct to reach out anymore because the few times I’ve reached out the abuse got worse.
It got/gets worse. There was/is blood. There was/is crying. There was/is sharp and bruise and windpipes that couldn’t find air because hands and clothing and others restricted them. Sometimes your brain catches you before you do the forever leaving, and you have to settle for the self-harm instead.
One of the reasons I was thankful for this job is because, due to the pandemic, it was work from home. That guaranteed me one thing—no sexual abuse from managers or coworkers. At least not physically. (To note, nothing like that has happened at this job either but it’s important to remember that it could. I don’t want to be caught off guard later.) It made me think that my self-harm, my passive suicidality would decrease (I know it never goes away). Learning this was not the case has been gut-scooping, hopeless filling, but it’s been even harder than necessary because everyone around me has told me, “You should be grateful.” It’s the same feeling I got whenever we were derisively asked, “What, were you working in the cotton fields?” whenever we dared to look tired. It’s the same feeling I got whenever a family member told me with all the work they’ve done they deserve my job, not me. It’s the understanding that I am not deserving of what’s happening because it should be sufficient, but I am not deserving of this because they believe I deserve much worse.
But, as I’ve been nearing autistic burnout (which I had, unbknownst to me, right after graduating high school and has taken at least eight years to recover from—so we’re not doing this shit again) I’m taking what Ray Fisher tweeted once, to heart:
“You can be grateful for something and still know you deserve better.”
Though this place has opened the door for many people of marginalized identities to enter, it has failed to create a room that’s safe enough for all of us to work. This is still a cisheteropatriarchal space and there is no room for us in here. There is no room for discussions on how black people struggle with watching their community be murdered by police and other racists as victims of state-sanctioned genocide, how disabled people are routinely trampled on if not downright ignored when old systems of work prove inaccessible. There is no room for the litany of violences that black and brown people face before even getting into the office and no room for acknowledgment much less action around how those violences inform the capacity to do the work that those who don’t even think of these violences can do.
Toni Morrison says, “Racism is a distraction. It keeps you from doing your work.” I’ve repeated it to myself whenever I fall down the rabbit hole of what can I do to make people who hold power aware of how difficult this—existing within spaces that actively invsibilize and destroy you—is. But, I’ve been using it as a shovel to dig deeper into an abyss—if they cared, they would do something. It is not my responsibility to get people to care about other peoples’ existence because I do not have time to explain facts to people who refuse to do their work. I’m learning to use that Toni Morrison quote as a light, as a beacon, for my people to find me and I, them, so that I can better serve them and so I can stop using my life to re-create the wheel. James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Fred Hampton, Angela Davis, and so many others have already done the work of telling the truth about cisheterpatriarchal white supremacy, colonization, and their ilk. It is not my responsibility to repeat them. It’s my responsibility to find community and to pick up where they left off so we don’t remain stuck.
I came across this TikTok from Scalawag Magazine (who are amazing and you should support if you’re able!) a while ago.
“Ask better questions, so we can get to better places.” ~Sherronda J. Brown
Instead of asking, “will this job keep me from dying?”, I’m going to ask what’s the job that will treat me better than decent, what’s the job that I can do the work because they properly accommodate me and my disability, what’s the job that will allow me to still do the things most important to me because my work, my heart’s work, cannot be done in a nine to five. It feels audacious to ask for a job that will treat me well, that will pay me well, that will give me the health insurance I need. It feels impossible. But, I still have to ask.
We (especially (disabled)(queer) black people socialized as girls and women) are taught not to ask for much—if anything at all. And if we do, people make you pay for asking. Oh, how I know it. Look at the threats, the deadnaming, the laughter at how dare you declare your existence as important. Feel the face pressed close to mine as they push me into a corner, the unwanted kisses in front of God and every customer and nothing stopped, the box cutter in the manager’s hand, the biting of it’s teeth in my throat.
I know I will be punished for the asking. But I am tired. (I’ve been tired since I was six years old.) Working multiple jobs and taking multiple classes just to arrive at a place maybe two steps ahead and one step to the left of where I began isn’t sustainable. I need new questions for myself. I need better answers for myself.
No longer, “Are you doing enough?” but:
“Why do you have to “do” enough to be worthy of existing?”
“Who decides what is enough doing?”
“Why are you answering to them?”
“How can you answer to yourself instead?”
“How can you break free of thinking that restricts you rather than allows you to grow?”
No longer “Did you get xyz done directly after finishing uvw?” but:
“Have you celebrated that you did the work?”
“Have you celebrated every small task not just the finished product?”
“Are you resting before rushing into the next project?”
“Why are you in a rush?”
“What will help you slow down?”
“What are you scared of finding if you slow down?”
“How can you meet it?”
“How can you walk with instead of run from it?”
“How will you return the guilt that was assigned to you by people who do not care about you?”
“How do you return the things that hurt you and were never yours to begin with?”
No longer, “How can I get people to treat me better?” but:
”How can I consistently remind myself that I am worth treating well?”
“When others aren’t willing to treat me well, how can I remember that their refusal to do so is not a reflection of my worth?”
“How can I make my life so full with people who treat me well and are committed to continuing to do that, that it’s nearly bursting?”
“How can I treat myself the way I want to be treated?”
“How can I surround myself with so much good life that I instinctually turn to it—even in my lowest moments—instead of away?”
I don’t have these answers. But, the asking—for right now—is enough.