How to write your body/disability newsletter when you suddenly live in a place where no one's weird about it!
They're just *not.* What am I supposed to do now?
The South ain’t perfect and I’m not sayin’ it is. But their attitudes toward disability are. Now of course I’m going to write this and then have something to rage about by Saturday, maybe, but maybe not. So far, all I can sum up in terms of how people in Georgia see disability is, if they can help, they want to. So far, no one’s made assumptions about how badly I need them, they’ve just made it clear that if they can make anything easier, they will.
Our landlord, for example, who’s a radiant Southern novel character himself, told me that if I decide I’d prefer a ramp to the couple of steps that lead to our door, he’ll be happy to put one in. Or, he said, if there’s anything else I’d like in our house in terms of adaptation (grab bars in the shower are game-changers) he’ll take care of it. The day I walked to my new therapist’s office, a young passenger in a group of people in the car asked me very warmly if I needed a ride, which I didn’t have to take because I was almost there, but I appreciated.
The day before yesterday, my body felt like a column of sweat as I walked, all hope of solidity gone, and I still didn’t take the ride I was offered because I knew I was close to home and I’m still navigating this town. (I can get from home to my therapist’s office and from my therapist’s office to downtown but I’m still figuring out downtown-to-home. Thankfully, campus-to-home is basically the same place by half-a-block.) But the lady who leaned out and asked me if I needed a ride followed up with, “I live just right there, me and my daughter. If you ever need anything, let me know.”
People in the South are not afraid of need, and it’s spiritually refreshing to be back where community is central to life, rather than the every-person-of-any-gender-for-their-goddamn-selves West. When Ian and I were shopping for a washing machine and mentioned that it’d be helpful to have a truck for moving large appliances, the woman helping us at Lowe’s called over her clearly-friend-and-coworker and said, “This woman is crazy, but if you ever need anything painted, she’ll get it done better than anyone. Hey, you got a truck? They need a truck.”
We didn’t need a truck, it turned out, flatten the seats in our Scion xB and a washing machine or dishwasher respectively fits just fine. I was about to knock on some neighbors’ doors to see if they could help Ian move the machines, but he got them all in himself, I will never know how.
People out West are, ultimately, pioneer types who, let’s be real, would’ve left a baby like the one I was on top of the Sierras because I obviously couldn’t be useful. (Is that harsh? I’m open to all evidence to the contrary!) This is why a lot of their progressiveness has always rang false to me, no matter how earnest they truly believe they are. I have never felt more disabled than when I met a cyclist friend at a crowded “punk” DIY bike shop in which all the “leftist” “activists” were discussing the importance of public transit and Access, with the bicycles arranged so that one had to maneuver quite meticulously to get around, multiple wires criss-crossed all over the floor, and a small dog kept leaping into people’s paths and nearly tripping them, which everyone thought was hilarious.
What a horrible night that was, with such an upbeat atmosphere. Here, nobody needs to be upbeat, because they’re not working against inner-misanthropy. There are trade-offs, of course, like needing to drive to Atlanta for what feels like all goods and services, and sometimes I feel impossibly urban as I’m paging through the local paper (and I do mean paging, with my fingers). But Ian helped me through my smalltown-crisis by reminding me that in the US, if you’re not in New York and your MFA offers you full funding, you’re somewhere small. We went through the list, and concluded that it’s long been decided that The Experience of being a writer paid to work and continue your education is to move to a town that functions as your writing retreat.
I would jump at the chance to live in NY, if we had money. But at the moment, we do not, not that way, and I can’t imagine having the mental space to truly write while having to make ends meet in whatever tiny hovel we could almost-afford. Instead, I’ve got all the space I need to stretch out and finish projects, and they’ve been coming at a clip I’ve never experienced before. It’s…it’s wild.
I don’t even know how to end this. Everything is just starting, really.