"CP" can mean "Crazy Person", but don't blame me.

cpmeanscrazyperson:

They say it’s temporary, but that’s because most people can change their situation faster than I can. I’m depressed because I’m stuck. I live in a town where there are very few job opportunities, no public transportation within walking distance…there’s basically nothing…

They say it’s commonly called situational depression because there are a lot of common symptoms…it almost makes more sense to me to continue calling it situational depression, but then i get people saying “you’re lazy, unmotivated…”etc, whatever…no…I’m depressed.  it’s commonly called situational depression because it IS depression. I feel like in this case I’m debating which of these two terms is the lesser of two evils. If I tell somebody I’m fighting situational depression, they’ll try to tell me to “keep my head up, think positive”…which, by the way, doesn’t usually work for REAL depression and this is real, even if it’s not the “chemical imbalance” depression. The other side of this coin means I’d be calling it “Adjustment Disorder”…then the looks I’d get would say “what the hell is that?”…

I warned you, you opened up a HUGE can of worms

disabilitydiaries1:

So, as you all know, I do not have Cerebral Palsy (CP). However, I have a lot of fiends who do have CP and, after hearing them talk about CP, I have some questions that I want to ask. I decided to make this post public on my blog as I feel they some people may have the same questions as me, but…

So,here are my 10 questions… 

1. What does it feel like to have CP? 
   Physically, i don’t feel much from the CP itself. Before I got diagnosed with arthritis, my left (affected) side actually had a higher pain tolerance than my right side because of the way my left side is “wired”…but with arthritis now, I feel a completely different sort of pain. I am a “mild CP” case, very mild apparently. I don’t have as many spasms as others do, so it almost seems like nobody even knows they can happen when they do. I have a startle reflex that nobody seems to recognize even while I’m explaining it. Dogs are a really good (or bad) trigger for it. Any time a dog brushes up against my left hand, I will startle like crazy, and people think it’s because I’m scared…no, it’s because he hit my palsy arm. By the way, it definitely wasn’t fun having that startle reflex while my wrist was broken and in a cast. Every time I’d startle it would hurt like HELL. During the time my left arm was broken, I attended a Boy Scout campout where they kept firing a cannon. Every time that cannon went off, so did my startling reflex.
2. I know that, for some people, CP can be really painful. What’s the best way I can help you when you are in pain? My pain is more from arthritis, and it actually can be migratory, I’ve had the location of the pain change anywhere between once every two minutes, to about once every 20 minutes. If you have some Tylenol or Advil or something like that to spare, it might be a good idea to offer some, but I say it “might” be a good idea because somebody might be on prescription meds that shouldn’t be taken with what you have to give them. For example, when I was on arthritis medication for 60 days, I wasn’t supposed to take any aspirin or ibuprofen, why? because all three are the same type of medication, NSAIDs. NSAIDs stands for “Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs”…they’re all blood thinners, and too much blood thinning can be very bad. If they tell you they can’t take what you have to offer, BELIEVE IT.
3. What other ways does CP effect you besides physically? 
    As far as what it feels like mentally for me, I feel like a ticking time bomb that keeps getting rebuilt and I never know the time limit. This is why I’m on tumblr, so that I can explode through my fingers and not my actions or my voice. As much as I’d like to just push CP aside, I can’t do that. It’s always with me and literally affects every part of my life, physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, and of course it makes it difficult to put any kind of money in my wallet. It’s always there. The one positive thing about being left hemiplegic is that the right side of my brain is affected, the left side is “intact” and that makes me really good at mental math. 
4. How can I help you best? That’s different for every situation really, if I need help, I’ll definitely tell you what I need, and try to be as clear as I can.
5. Do you have any pet peeves with non-CP people? Again, this is actually the reason I’m on tumblr. Every one of my rants explains something that pisses me off as a disabled 25-year old man in what I should start calling an “ABnormal” world. It’s not everyone either. I feel like I’m preaching to a 1% choir here on tumblr when it’s the REST OF THE WORLD that doesn’t understand. Even though I don’t get openly angry at them, my closest friends and my own family have all been guilty of forgetting that I even have CP. I can understand when people forget I have arthritis, but the CP is visible, and it’s always been that way. Speaking of “visibility”…DON’T tell me to hide my CP from anyone. I’m lucky, I can hide my CP a bit if I choose to do it, but some people just have to know about it…good friends, dates, girlfriends, FUTURE EMPLOYERS, teachers… they NEED to know.
6. What’s the worst thing a non-CPer could do or say?
   Too many things off the top of my head that I could put on this list:
   a) “You can’t do [insert task/activity here].”
   b)”Don’t say that you can’t do [insert task/activity here].”
   c) insults are always a bad idea unless you know the person and the know you’re joking. 
   d) When asking me for the first time about my disability, don’t phrase it as “What the hell is wrong with your hand?” or something similar because the response you get will be “Get the hell away from me.” 
   e)  ”you’re lazy/unmotivated/not making an effort…”
   This list could keep going but I need to save some for future tumblr posts. By the way, I’ve heard the first two phrases listed here being said by the same people. That combination tells me you’re not trying to encourage me, you’re trying to control me and trying to take complete control over me is the worst move you could ever make.
7. What do you worry about most in the future that’s related to your CP? Future medical issues, jobs, relationships, EVERYTHING. My mind is so overactive that I can’t even shut it down long enough to let me fall asleep.
8. What’s the biggest challenge that you face right now with your CP? My answer to this sounds simple but is actually very complicated; that is “living a full happy life.” Sometimes things just don’t go well for me, that’s enough for me to handle, but then I get those people who say “you’re lazy/unmotivated/not making an effort…” I already have depression as well, people who say things like this are usually doing more harm than good by saying that (there are times when it may be valid though).
9. Do you ever wish for a cure? Yes, for others but not for me. I was born this way, I’ve spent 25 years trying to live this way, it’s a big part of who I am. I can’t see myself feeling like the same person if I got “cured”. I never asked for much from anyone. I don’t want a cure. I just want the people that i ask for their help to actually help me (especially those who are PAID to do so and they don’t). There will always be that part of me that wishes I could do more “normal” things like learning how to drive and feeling safe doing it. That alone would open up a world for me. 
10. If you could tell non-CPers anything, what would it be? 
    Stop discriminating and stop bullying, if you keep up bullying, I will literally either use my disability as a weapon, or as a reason to CARRY a weapon. I rarely feel safe or happy because so much of life eludes me. I can put this very bluntly, but it might offend some… Like I mentioned before, every aspect of my life is affected by CP, I’m already dealing with a physical disability, a visual disability, a condition that causes chronic pain AND situational depression…If you’d rather make a joke out of my existence, don’t ever let me hear you tell it. If you’d choose to be friendly, stick by me and help me fight my battles, I’ll be there to help you fight yours too (to the absolute best of my ability) I could be the coolest guy you ever met, but I WILL hide that until I think you understand enough to see it.  I’ve got enough BS in my life as it is, I can only take so much before I explode, but if you are a close friend, I will try to put myself aside for a minute if need be to help you. One more thing I need to say. I can’t and won’t speak for all people with CP. This is just me, though I hope there are a few more out there who agree.

BONUS QUESTION!!! *haha, this question just came to me right now. 

What is your vision for an ideal world for people with and without CP? My vision for the world is jumpy, which is good, because one of the things that is impossible is to achieve an “ideal” situation. That’s not me being cynical, by the way, you can easily read that into the definition of the word ideal. Beyond that, my jumpy vision for the world can only be explained in poetry (If you get back to disabilitydiaries1’s blog, you can find my poetic explanation if you scroll back far enough)

Some people have asked me why I started blogging about life with a disability, or sometimes it’s about why I decided to start NOW. I don’t remember exactly how it happened down to the minute, but it actually started with one night when my depression hit me like a ton of bricks. Depression is bad enough when you start beating yourself up, but so often, when that is already happening, somebody decides to throw their two cents into a vending machine that doesn’t accept pennies. Somebody was probably yelling at me about the fact that I’m at home with no job and supporting me costs too much money. While trying to tune out this unnecessary antagonizing, I was reading my friend’s blog post about including kids with disabilities in the classroom (follow the link to my post, there’s a link to her post in it). I read that post and thought “why not try to ‘include’ the able-bodied world into the world of people with disabilities?” So that’s exactly what I attempted to do with this post. Honestly, it felt great just to attempt to explain why my life is what it is and how much my disabilities affect me. It started as one facebook note, but then I realized that there could be a new issue coming up for me every day that’s somehow related to one of the conditions I deal with every day (CP, Visual impairment, depression, and the occasional anxiety attack…at least I *think* they’re anxiety attacks). So when I realized this, I thought I’d try to spread the word a bit. While I’ve never been much of an activist, activism could be (and hopefully is) a side-effect of my own personal venting if I’d continue to post it to the internet. So I copied that note from facebook to a new dedicated blog at blogspot…and then I got reminded that tumblr isn’t twitter, realized tumblr is simpler to use that blogger/blogspot, so now I’m here, and I found a gadget that would let me import all my blogger posts to tumblr. I also just realized that since I found this import gadget, my first post on tumblr may have just become a lie, because now i don’t need blogspot anymore :p

Stumbling around tumblr, I saw this and I keep bouncing back and forth between “this seems like an amazing idea” and “this kind of really pisses me off…”. It seemed awesome for a minute that they would make people with disabilities the focus of a dating show, but first and foremost, the show is called “The Undateables”…I understand what they’re going for, but I feel the need to punch somebody in the face for this one. It seems a tad obvious that some able-bodied person came up with the title. The other thing that gets me is that the “contestants” (for lack of a better word) seem to have mental conditions. First off, these folks may not even realize how offensive that title is, and secondly, I’ve been struggling with the same issues in the dating scene (see my earlier rants) and my struggles are purely due to a physical disability. It almost seems as if the creators of this show don’t even understand how people with physical disabilities are judged on a daily or even hourly basis. Not all disabilities are visible, and I respect everyone with invisible disabilities just as much, partly because i’m visually-impaired too…but even with the visual impairment, I can clearly see that people with visible disabilities are judged just by looks. People with invisible disabilities don’t have that “problem” even though they are judged just as harshly if not more so. This TV show is bordering between trying to help these people and exploiting and offending them. It’s a good thing I don’t have British TV stations, because I’d be throwing things at my TV if this show came across my screen.

Ironically, flutterflyinvasion says she doesn’t like the word “overcome” but then goes on to explain EXACTLY why I use it. I swear she’s in my head sometimes. Most disabilities are permanent, so it isn’t possible to truly overcome the disability itself, but what’s there to overcome is the way society sees us. It’s also ironic that it always seems to be those yelling at me for saying “I can’t” and trying to motivate me with cliche bullshit that no longer works on me who are the first ones to tell me, “YOU can’t…” whether that blank is filled in with “get a job”, “drive a car”, “support a family”, or whatever it may be. First things first, don’t tell me not to say “I can’t” do something ever, but especially then, don’t turn around and tell me what you THINK I can or can’t do. If you are not one of the few people in my life who I actually appreciate your ability to read my thoughts, stop trying to read them, stop trying to change them, especially if your ideas are filled with idealistic, ableist, cliche bullshit. Don’t tell me you know what it’s like to be me if it will become obvious to me that you don’t. By the way, if you’re one of those who says “don’t say ‘I can’t’” , it is already obvious that you don’t get it. If you can’t empathize with me, stop trying to motivate me; your methods are flawed; they will never work for me or people like me. We can’t overcome our disabilities…I use the word because we need to overcome the able-bodied world. Able-bodied, often abbreviated to AB…these people think they’re normal…does that make them ABnormal? Ok….I need to stop before I get too heated and activate my arthritis pain, lol.

cpmeanscrazyperson:

When people forget that I have a disability (believe me, it happens fairly often), I see it as both a compliment and a slap in the face. I take it as a compliment because it starts to show me how far I’ve come while living with cerebral palsy and a visual impairment. On…

unconventionalmoose:

Point to keep in mind if you know somebody with a chronic illness or condition:

If I cancel plans with you, it’s not personal. I just am not up to it then.

Earlier today, I made plans with somebody to meet up on a weekday evening- and then I started thinking about how…

It’s very nice to see a few others out there REALLY get it. So proud to be good friends with a few of them…

You’d be amazed how great it feels sometimes just to know you’re not alone.

I’m an Eagle Scout with a disability, I’ve known this merit badge existed since I was a scout. I always thought they wouldn’t let me try to earn it because they’d tell me I was already “too aware”. lol