[poem] To Abled People, In Response To The Covid-19 Lockdown
How does it feel? This -I gesture vaguely to my last half-decade - is normal now. This is what everyone's going through. This isn't what anyone else is going through at all. How are you doing? Are you okay? Our world isn't built for this. Staying at home. Why didn't you put supports in place when it was just us sick people? I want to cackle as you find out first hand that housebound doesn't mean sitting around watching TV all day. I envy you for your ability to watch TV at all. Thank you for the free resources. I hope they help thousands of people. Why weren't they there before. Over the years I've slowly, thoughtfully, desperately discovered how to cope. I want to teach you all of my coping strategies. My coping strategies aren't for you. I want to listen while you vent about how hard it is for you. What's your problem? It'll only be for a year or two at most. You can still do everything except go out, so what are you complaining about? I want to cup your face in my hands and tell you, softly, that it'll be alright. That it's not so bad living like this. I want to smugly proclaim “see? It's terrible living like this”. I want to sit you down and make you sign a legal document promising you won't forget about me when this is all over*. *for you I want to care for you. I want you to care about me.
I’m having a lot of feelings about watching abled people respond to covid. Not just the way some people are making it extremely obvious whose lives they feel are worth living, but also their response to social distancing measures. Things that society, as a whole, didn’t care about pre-lockdown (when they were only happening to disabled people) are suddenly A Big Deal. I saw an article about the government being deeply concerned about the mental health effects of being confined to the house for extended periods, which was incredibly weird as someone who has been housebound for 3 years. This poem was an attempt to capture my confusing and often contradictory feelings about the whole situation.