I fucking hate that I have to keep writing about this.
I absolutely fucking hate it.
A wise friend of mine said a while back that she detested that she always had to speak to trans issues, and prayed that one day it would just be normalized. You can say the same for racism, for sexism, and yes indeed, for ableism too.
It’s fucked. All of it.
And if I have my way, I’m going to put the nail in those coffins myself. Or rather, in an ideal world, hand the nails and hammer over and hold the coffin steady while the most appropriate people to do so drive the nails in themselves.
See, if you have any idea who the fuck I am, (And you likely should by this point,) you know that I have a number of disabilities. ADHD (The Inattentive Subtype), Social Anxiety Disorder, A Major Mood Disorder, Major Depression, and a diagnosed Learning Disorder, most of these from the 1990s. The last one I think is Dyscalculia.
What does all that mean?
Well, it means jack shit.
Because that’s not for you to decide! It’s for me and the experts to decide. So you’re going to sit down, shut the fuck up, and just read quietly for this one. Because at the end of the day, I can only speak for myself, and you can only speak for yourself. And other neurodiverse people can speak for themselves, too.
We should always be learning from each other, of course. But education is a topic I must yet sit on, until these sweet, sweet stocks get all fresh and tender, and then – something something apes and diamond hands. (Don’t even fucking try to keep up, you’ll likely just get a nosebleed.) Anyways, once that happens, I gather my rhetorical scythe for the reaping. Which is to wax metaphorically and dream a little dream, by speaking in riddles that only the clever will understand, and the stupid will gape at slack-jawed.
See, Ableism is this pervasive thing in our society. Our broken, fucked up, antiquated, colonial system-riddled society.
It’s as pervasive as all those things I mentioned above (No not the apes you rubes) that every marginalized community encounters every day. It’s constant, and it’s fucking tiring.
So as is the goal of these articles, I will break down complicated topics into the words of the layperson, so that the common riff-raff such as I, myself, some dumb disabled logger kid, can grow, evolve, adapt, and survive.
Don’t say I never gave you a fighting chance, humanity!
See, for people with disabilities, life is different. As the wide slew of mental disabilities are varied and numerous, most of us folks with different brain chemistry or synapse wiring to yours go with the terms “Neurodiverse” or “Neurodivergent.” It’s just easier than having to rattle off my slew of formal medical diagnoses as per up above.
I’ve actually turned even this into a joke for the clever – that those intelligent enough via their disabilities and neurodivergent brains will undoubtedly become demigods of sorts, choosing at a whim to become heroes or villains, and in my case, that I will pull a full on rewrite of the plot to that Will Ferrell movie “Megamind” before he went back to japing like a jester for the ignorant masses.
The punchline to the joke is that my goals are to save the human race from extincting itself via the looming ten year climate deadline. And I will achieve my goals by any means possible, including supervillainy if I have to, in the comedic vein of a 1980s or 1990s cartoon villain such as Skeletor or Shredder.
My more clever friends think the joke is trite due to how complicated it is, but that’s part of the allure for me, in that you must be “this tall to ride” in a sense. And as all of my work in its entirety is 18+ only, there is literally a bar one must jump if they wish to reach the oily nut center of the cashew.
Ahhh, cashews, the rich man’s nut. Delicious.
Anyways, in typical Pickup Truck Diaries fashion, I am going to educate you in story, if only to instill the reverence for storytelling that is the mark of an elder or master craftsman. For these things should indeed be valued far more than our colonial systems do at present.
In my hometown, there used to be a man. As with many of the most brilliant minds I have ever known, well… He’s dead, Jim.
This man came from an older era, in a time before science or medicine knew jack shit about neurodiversity or how to treat it beyond lobotomies. Watch Sucker Punch if you’d like a nice, neat little diatribe for how they used to treat and abuse mental health patients.
This man was strange, and no, I’m not going to name him. Because his story is a living legend, told across a thousand small towns all across North America. The story of ableism in full force. Told through a lifetime in stories and the strange sort of comedy that only the most brilliant of minds can churn forth from the grey matter!
This man worked for the government for a long time, see? And in keeping with how folks were kept at the time, including my own grandfather, he lived with his mother, in a house like any other person. Yet, one of the most famous stories is about how the means and the ends were strange nuanced creations for him, constructed from what dreams should be realities and which should be novelties amongst the normies. (That’s most of you reading this. The neurotypicals as we call you.)
For this man never cashed a paycheck, piling them up as they arrived in desk drawers – for the job was merely a fulfillment, a calling, and the money itself meant nothing, for he had everything he needed. Now, the normal person’s brain might wrench and twist, disgusted at why this man might still live with his mother whilst gainfully employed.
Well, that’s a good old fashioned example of ableism, you motherfucker.
See, the colonial system has imposed a number of strict hierarchies upon our society, in addition to the sections of those systems that disproportionately target black people, indigenous people, women, and the queer community. (Read some fucking shit on intersectionality!)
Several of those hierarchies are laid out upon the realms of independence and the nature of the systemic norms that require one to be self-sufficient at all costs. That’s baked right into the idea of “The American Dream,” that old lie that every individual should be able to make their own way in the world by their own hard work, grit, survivalism, and resilience.
You should not need to rely on anyone to survive, right?
Well, that’s the trope of the system that is capitalism, anyways. It’s only just recently that I’ve decided to do what I do as a hobby – master systems and break them at my own leisure, for capitalism. As I’ve done with Magic: The Gathering, Yu Gi Oh, World of Warcraft, any other game I play, etc. Etc. Theorycrafting is amusing to me. And the more of a jester I can be, poking fun at inefficiencies, well… Fix the fucking inefficiencies, then!
Yes, I’ve chosen to do this for capitalism. I have my own little proprietorship and everything! I charge $80 an hour, and I don’t discriminate! Unlike many others I won’t name.
See, one of the nuances of neurodiversity, is that most of the disabled folks I’ve met are blessed and cursed simultaneously. Another complex metaphor I often use for my own disabilities is that they are part of my “blood curse,” those old black magicks from the ancient ways that permeate the clan even now. There’s a reason I have taken on my clan name as my only name, and forsworn the first name I did not choose, while keeping said family name as a point of heritage and honor for my dead (and living) ancestors. The punchline is that anybody who knows neurodiversity even marginally, knows already that most neurodiversity suites in all their beautifully macabre forms are genetic and hereditary traits, passed on through alleles. The generations older than me were never diagnosed because the knowledge didn’t exist. So they just kept on keeping on via whatever coping mechanisms worked.
But back to the story!
No. Neurodiverse folks often cannot fulfil the portions of their own caretaking that lead to health and wellness for their own specific conditions. I am one of few who beat the statistics stacked against us and ground out two degrees through spite and endless pots of coffee, self-medicating with caffeine to backhand academia across the face as a matter of principle. I was told to my face by a school counsellor that due to my disabilities, I would never get into University. Maybe try college and transfer! I had goals, of course. And I am extraordinary even amongst some of my strange and most fey-like peers. So I operated on pure spite for a long time, just to prove the haters wrong. Did it make the haters go away?
FUCK NO.
I still have haters left and right, people undermining me or stabbing me in the back constantly.
Just another normal.
So this man lived with his mother. He did not cash his paychecks. But he was clever, and brilliant, and as most folks of our kind do, he was trained to be truthful, honorable, and to help whenever he could.
While there is something to be said in the use and abuse of the neurodiverse and their need to help, tied to rejection dysphoria coming from bullying and ostracization in many of their histories, I simply don’t have the time. There are far more brilliant people I can point you to doing that work, and I would much rather amplify the voices of those evil geniuses using their superpowers to make the world a better place, or of those simply trying to live honorably and for justice. In many different forms the same old battle always takes shape of.
This strange, eccentric, weird old man’s hyperfixation was local politics.
Some of you may not know, but for every disability, there is often a tilting of sorts. You have great deficits in some areas, and incredible powers in others. One of these superpowers you can be gifted with is called “hyperfocus” or “hyperfixation.” It comes from a lack of executive function within the brain, leading to a distortion of time and space. Common in ADHD (Now categorized as on the spectrum, for whatever the DSM-5 is worth,) and many different types of Autism, it literally means that when interested in a subject, you literally cannot stop doing that thing.
Impulse control is so closely linked with this it’s stupid. The example in ADHD is that the person is constantly seeking dopamine doping via stimulation internally (the kind that myself and many women with ADHD present as,) as well as externally (The kind that literally cannot sit still and need to move and engage and touch things for that sweet, sweet dopamine fix.)
I’ve only got an Education and an Arts degree, so my expertise is only from the pedagogical side and as it relates to my own lived experience, for the record. “Prior knowledge” is the education buzzword for it. I am not a psychologist, nor do I have a specializing Masters in a Psychology or Biology field outside of first year human anatomy and body systems. Do your own fucking research, that’s why we have the entirety of human knowledge available to you via Google and Wikipedia, duh.
Anyways, for this strange old man, his hyper focus or hyperfixation manifested in said specific area, as it often does. You never know where that insane mastery is going to fall, and it often changes, much at the tides of whim as anything else.
His hyperfocus fell within the realm of municipal law and community building, which I refer to at the species-wide level as “Social Engineering.” Social engineering is a particular interest of mine, where you apply biology, urban planning, psychology, herd mentality, and situational conditions to direct a populace towards a particular outcome or desired result. Now, in my case, this fits in well to my “Cartoon Supervillain” comedy bit, in that often people learn much too late that I’ve had an ulterior motive all along, but one that is always geared towards their best interests. Education, Learning, Understanding, Growth, and the like. When I play Magic: The Gathering, for instance? I am usually shepherding my fellow players to become better players – running removal, card advantage, etc. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being an educator, even after The Marionette Man launches and everything changes.
I hope you respect that this article needed to be written badly enough to interrupt my current rewrite to the Deep Point of View that my Editor has requested.
Anywho, back to that strange old man…
He memorized every single zoning code, the list of bylaws, hell, the man had a reference binder and showed up to every single council meeting of the local town council. Tuesdays, without fail, he’d be sitting in the back row.
What did he do?
He ensured that the truth was always spoken, and that the decisions being made would help the maximum number of people and safeguard the community of the town to ensure that the place he loved was kept safe.
Now, regardless of whether he was right or wrong, as with most neurodiverse folks, his intentions were always pure, at least in the three decades I knew him, and as I was told his stories by my own elders.
That alone is worthy of reverence.
Truth and honor, the core of any good soul.
I’ve known christians, atheists, pagans, spiritualists, and I ensure I memorize the proper code, respects, and stories I am told by any local nation member.
The best amongst them all are those that know truth and honor to be important values.
They often come just before justice. Or alongside it.
This strange old man was an eccentric, whose lessons and insights often came in complex riddles, comedy bits, or metaphors, that seemed foreign to the simple, but which resonated powerfully with both the neurodivergent and the clever.
He always wished to sit back and play the watchdog, ensuring that corruption and foul play would always be outed and punished. When he grew frustrated with the corruption that was so often rampant amongst the old boys club, the wealthy old white men who controlled the economy and had profited off the backs of those around them, he would run for town council, even!
One famous joke was that he wore a paper bag to answer a reporter’s request for an interview, mocking the nameless disfigurement of long dead comedy bits echoing The Three Stooges or the slapstick of yore. I must honor any and all who bow before the Trickster, no matter what form he takes, be it an elder prodding fun at despondent youth, or the Raven itself, outwitting us loggers and stealing my brother’s lunch from the open window of the bush truck in a half dozen different ways. Thus, you know that such a comic performance, a perfect portrayal of the jester, is something that I greatly respect. It shows humility and awareness of one’s own insignificance in the thick of things.
At the end of the day, we’re all just pieces of a bigger puzzle, so why not make fun of our mortality? We must “spark joy” in any fashion we can, eh Kondo?
At times, the metaphors came in the shape of a toy boat, sailing along before it hit the sharpened rocks lurking beneath the water and sunk.
But eccentric brilliance is often underestimated.
This same man was always using his cleverness in ways that amused him most. He was always present for a free lunch, and one could barter in knowledge as might the bear know all his favorite berry patches. Just follow along as best you can, and you’ll find some blackberries eventually.
See, this man had no need for money. All currency is artificial, imaginary, a representation of wealth we decide to apply value towards. If I told you tomorrow that your country would be adopting the Mexican Peso, you would gape, but it has happened a dozen plus times throughout history, and the shattered gold and silver standards attest to the insolence of economists that flout the existence of inflation via doing away with any physical stakes to hold such artificialism down.
Honestly, I have no need for money either. An old Chris Farley joke that me and my dad love (I always misattribute it to John Candy,) is that we could live in a van down by the river and be perfectly happy, as long as we get to live in symbiosis with nature and enjoy the small comforts in life such as good company and stimulating discussion and storytelling.
However, remembering the times in my life I have lived in trailers across the far-flung corners of BC, from Boston Bar at Hell’s Gate, where my arm almost rotted off from a Brown Recluse bite, to the basement of an 80-year old woman and her own 50-year old son in D’Arcy…
Well, as she sings in the Little Mermaid: “I want to be where the people are.”
No, I don’t need money for myself, although a few creature comforts like a hot tub for my crackling spine, and a blender for smoothies would indeed be nice. And yet, if I wish to consume the entirety of the zeitgeist to redirect humanity away from extinction, and if i only have a ten year deadline well…
I’m going to need millions, if not billions.
Which is why I’m so bullish in my stock choices, of course. (I had a friend ask me, but no, I don’t have my brokerage ticket, so not right now, I’m busy.)
None of this is financial advice, either, of course. Don’t play the stock market unless you’re at least as smart as me, if not smarter. And remember the bar of “this tall to ride” is being a fucking CARTOON SUPERVILLAIN.
This old man never got his driving license, so of course, he got around by bicycle, which he did all the way up until the back was so curled over that he was literally unable to do so. If a man in his seventies could accomplish such a feat of resilience, grit, and survival, I have no excuse.
It’s why even when my neck snaps and pops, and my knees swell and ache, I run or bike for both my own health, and to model the paths that my own elders helped teach me. I have numerous wise old elders who have taught me these things, not just the dead. Everyone from old barroom heroes, to my own former educators, old asian men half my size with twice the drive and attitude to never give up. Respect can be shown, as well as expressed, of course.
Everything that strange old man did was both fascinating and intelligent. If a problem arose, there was an ingenious solution. If there was a perceived challenge, usually he would find an answer. He had millions, most likely, in either assets or old unused paychecks. Just a guess on my part. But the crotchety old bastard roamed the town on his bike instead of living with any creature comforts, even the privileged life of electricity or heating. As he did so, he spent his time collecting recyclables to beautify the town, instead.
In my life as a disabled person, there is a quiet dignity to the lifestyle of the buddhist monk, echoed in the logger-wisdoms of my youth. You work hard, and you live with what you need. One does not need much beyond an old van down by the river to be happy, after all. What is material wealth worth when you can’t take it with you? What is the value of the sound of the flowing river, or the noonday winds through the leaves?
I struggle the most with this duality, the knowledge that this man lived with honor and wisdom, eschewing the norms of the society that so often painted him as the town fool.
Fuck your ableism.
Truth and honor. Justice.
I dislike dictators, preachers, and ultimatums.
But these are values I refuse to ever surrender. Ever again.
See, I have watched my own family struggle with a similar burden.
I have lived that burden.
Cast out, left alone, treated as another. Othered in every sense of the word. Not that I knew what the fuck I was doing. Forgive me father, for I have sinned, and I may be the advocate for Lucifer himself, Paradise Lost reworked, but I still know the penance I have to pay. For thrown chairs. For shattered teeth. For blood and bruises and violence. The stereotypes of disability that so many people have tried to paint me with. Those labels are part of why I’m a pacifist.
Why else do you think I walk the path I walk?
The greatest driver of fear is a lack of understanding.
Fear of the unknown.
And as the only thing I truly fear in this existence is myself, I will do my best to help you with your own ignorance and fear, as part of my own self-imposed “community service.”
See, ableism comes from this root of pure misunderstanding, the same lack of knowledge and understanding that most socio-economic problems frequently come from. Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Transphobia, Classism (Which is at the very root of many of these. Again, please, go learn about intersectionality.)
Our brains simply work differently than yours.
In some areas, we struggle. Executive function means I can master arts, tools, and skills in a single weekend. But for those stretches of 8-12 hours, I am lucky if I even can break the dissociative blur to pee, drink water, or feed myself. Sometimes I startle back to awareness from a session of hyperfocus knowing that I can never truly create the same structure for myself as others. This is why I get stuck in “Twitter-Holes” where my lack of executive function and impulse control can trap me for hours. I literally can’t stop myself. It’s part of the fucking disability.
In the eyes of folks who cannot comprehend or understand that world, we are treated as broken, faulty, or a waste of resources at usual first glances. Because we often struggle to even take care of ourselves or regulate, we are often mistreated or abused, and the more sinister, selfish, and greedy amongst your numbers take advantage of our more powerful skills for your own benefits and gains.
It is one thing to trade lunch for knowledge, a kindness I have tried to offer to many in my pursuit of obtaining and possessing all available information in existence, as per a secondary goal of making Montag and Bradbury proud.
It is another to only use and abuse the neurodivergent insofar as they are of help or benefit to you. And this is very much the norm. Being rejected by all of society, or called everything from weird, to fucked up, to yes, even retarded, well… Having experienced it, it’s absolutely fucked. And it builds this need for acceptance that flows through the undercurrent of everything you think, feel and do.
Sometimes it follows one through their entire life, and they continue to live in these traps, cycles of abuse in which they cling to toxic relationships simply because they need to feel accepted somewhere, anywhere.
The strongest, or at least the strongest of wills, stand alone against the darkness of the weak.
Living as yourself can truly be hell.
I’m sure any queer person could tell you that. I didn’t even know what Demisexual was until I was like twenty-three, and even now I sometimes doubt myself when I fear somebody will use my asexuality to paint me as a predator, the classic attack one sees utilized on the LGBTQ+ community.
There’s a irony to living in a “queer” (ha) sort of way, but… That’s for another article. And I’m really still hoping that Trans Matters starts up again.
Some neurodiverse people internalize this ableism so much, they doubt their very existence, and they kill themselves. I’ve tried. I would know. Good thing I failed. And I have a responsibility as a survivor. It is the words of Dylan Thomas speaking to me when I feel those dark places lurking.
“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.”
I might be a pacifist, but that does not mean I do not know how to rage against the dying of the light. Why else would I be trying to save a species from its own ignorant downfall? Well, perhaps it will be to write the greatest Epitaph a species could ever hope to have, at least that’s what I’ve told you my fallback plan is. And that’s purely for artistic and creative fulfillment.
This weird old man lived on his own for a very long time, standing by himself. He knew who he was, and he knew that no matter what cruel things they said about him…
Weird.
Strange.
Eccentric.
Fucked up.
Broken.
Retarded. That word being the ultimate act of ableism, perhaps. Maybe one day neurodiverse people will claim that word like my butch queer mentors in the 90s were able to reclaim “queer.”
No matter what they called him. He stood tall. Believed in what he knew. Stood for what he believed in.
Truth and honor. Truth and justice. Justice and honor.
It always cycles back.
The themes rarely change.
It’s just that only the cleverest amongst you can see them hidden amongst the stories.
That strange old man is dead. I wish to honor him still. I hope to do that by standing tall. By taking his old and making it new.
Become a transformer of sorts. Change the way people see the world.
My family has known this struggle. I watched my father fight for survival, holding honor, benevolence, truth, dignity, work ethic. As the world shit on him, used him, betrayed him, and treated him like garbage while he struggled just to make a go of things. Not everyone, no. But I can point you to exactly who is evil and who is not.
I refuse to let it continue.
I refuse to be treated like garbage.
Othered as a beast, an animal, a broken little boy in an office somewhere, being assessed again and again and again to find out what is wrong with you.
There is nothing wrong with us. This is merely how we are. We exist as we always have.
I sometimes think of a man I worked with once upon a time. He struggled with a great many things, this person. Neurodiverse as all hell. Overstimulated, forced into situations by the system, hurt intentionally – all to save money, by ripping away his supports, unable to process and thus acting out because he didn’t know what else to do. But wanting connection, belonging. And with the hyperfocus superpower to recall the stats of the entire Canucks roster for a given lineup. I like playing sports, and detest watching them, but I always admired his abilities, having dyscalculia as I believe I do.
I’m not sure if some of the ableism perhaps comes from jealousy, in some hilarious irony? Fear of great ability and power, regardless of the perceived deficit. Back to that fear of the unknown. People fear what they do not understand. I’ve come to smile and shake my head when people fear me.
The cruellest people have been those who are open and vocal in their ignorance, running their fucking mouths like they have any idea who you are, what you have lived, or those you have lost. I detest these people the most. Cruel for the sake of cruelty. Building themselves up by crushing you down. Callous because no, they truly don’t care about you. They never will. Stop hoping they will. Let them fester and rot in their own toxicity, and simply call a spade a spade.
Truth. Honor.
When the old man died, we lost something.
The values aren’t dead. Not yet. Not while I’m still breathing.
But yes, we did lose something.
We lost a role model. We lost someone who knew right from wrong, who spoke out against injustice, and who fought for common decency and dignity, and the good of the entire community. A flawed man, surely, like the rest of us. Perhaps as a result of the era within which he was grown, or intergenerational trauma, or from his own battles with stigma and mistreatment.
This story is common across North America. Too common. Too frequent.
A story I will take carefully and gingerly, wrap within velvet, and bury with grace and dignity. May these words serve as a mausoleum of sorts.
Ableism is more than just a name being called. If I had a dollar for every time an ignorant neurotypical person called me weird, or some other mean name, I’d already have made my millions.
The number of times I doubted myself and did not believe in my own intellect because of the beliefs and opinions of others? The number of times I would have profited immensely had I ignored them and stood on my own? Well, it is more than one, and that’s all I’ll say.
If I wasted my time by stopping and correcting every bully, harasser, discriminator, and straight up asshole who got in my way and treated me like dirt, I would never be finished. And some people revel in that fight, sure.
You make your own choices. Your own decisions. I can only share the knowledge and the stories. You make up your own mind. Maybe you’ll keep walking around being a huge piece of shit to people with disabilities.
Who knows?
But I can promise you one single thing. And when I make a vow, those who know me know that it’s very fucking serious. I am nothing if not a man of my word.
If I am present to witness you making that choice? Either in ignorance or in an active attempt to do harm?
I will stand up, and we will likely have words.
Just words.
But you won’t be very happy afterwards. And I will ensure that you will feel very small and incompetent, as you tried to make someone else feel. The venom of Jormundgandr is potent, just ask Thor.
In the meantime, I’m going to keep doing what I can. Part of the Social Justice Hangout, to quote a friend or two. I’m not going to be able to wave a wand and make injustice go away, because so much of the injustice comes directly from a broken system full of toxic people.
Like, don’t get me started on bureaucrats, and the common tendency for most neurotypicals to profit for themselves and look out for their own greedy interests first.
But again, that’s for another time. Can’t save the species in a day. Or even in a lifetime, perhaps.
We’ll see.
Maybe after reading this you’ll stand up when you do see ableism happening, if you’re not a coward. If you have a spine and a soul. I can’t see the future! Merely predict based on fact and probability.
You’ll make that choice when it comes.
Now… Let’s all get the fuck out of here.
-McRae
