Health

INTRODUCTION

Some staff, gees they were oblivious to my situation. I mean one staff member once commented how happy I was living where I did (in an institution – a place where I am no longer, thankfully), and she was genuine, to which I abruptly replied ‘no’. I went further, ‘why would I be happy living in a place with no privacy, no choice of housemates, with countless rules, where I’m the job and I often have strangers doing intimate things to my body?’

‘How would you feel?’ I asked her. I could see the cogs turning.

But shit this disconnected thinking really made (makes) me mad. Just because ‘staff’ or some people were (are) around so much they became completely desensitised to the catastrophic nature of my predicament. Which, admittedly could be interpreted as a good thing as people weren’t primarily seeing my disability, however in other regards some people walked all over me because I was simply the disabled man trapped in the group home.

When staff finished their shift and got to go home, I never got to go home. My disability, health routines, mortal vulnerabilities; they don’t take holidays or summer vacation.

In part my humanness existed from the compassion shown by others, or without others I was nobody. In a way, because of my physical limitations they somehow extended to my emotional or intellectual breath.