No, I Don’t Want Your Cure
Responding to comments I’ve heard constantly in my life when I revealed my disabilities:
P.S. I have both physical and psychiatric disabilities but I will not disclose them all here. There are many different types of disabilities so I urge you to also look into more of them to get a better glimpse of how vast the disabled community is. Disabled folks also have intersectional identities. I, for example, am Latinx, queer, low-income, and first-gen. These parts of my identity also shape my experience in the disabled community.
“But in the end wouldn’t you rather be more like me?”
No, I wouldn’t. If I was more like you I wouldn’t be who I am today. As much I struggle with my disabilities they are a part of me I can’t erase and don’t want to. I can’t imagine who I’d be without them. Who is this me we are speaking of anyways? The me that’s abled-bodied? Why does everyone think able-bodiedness is what everybody wants and what everyone aims for? Why are you what I should aim to be? I wish you were more focused on dismantling ableism rather than being focused on erasing my disabilities. I wish you were more focused on making places more accessible for us, rather than according to your ableist standards. I wish you focused on dismantling systemic ableism and improving the quality of life for all disabled people, rather than relying on us to fix ourselves and change everything “wrong with us.” I’d rather you be more like that.
“Why wouldn’t you want to be free from it?
I’ve received this question a lot, and from some of my closest friends. It’s hard to grasp my answer if you don’t have the psychiatric disabilities I do, so let me explain. No, I don’t want to be free from it. The way you say free implies I’d be completely free from it. Plus, your question begins with assuming I should do what you would do. You’re already trying to have a conversation with me without really understanding me and assuming if I don’t want to be free from it I must have yet another thing wrong with me. Either way, I feel like a defective product in your eyes but I’ll still answer the question.
I don’t want it that way. I want to change my response to my struggles, yes. I want to learn how to take better care of myself, yes, but to be completely rid of my disabilities frightens me. That sounds odd to you, right? It sounds odd to me when I say it sometimes. Like right now for example. I was just thinking about how sometimes I feel like my brain is eating away at itself and I want these bad feelings and horrible days to stop. I finally admitted to myself I want to seek out more help, and consistently at that. I wanted it to stop and begged my brain to help me do so. You’re probably thinking why the hell wouldn’t you want to be completely free of that? Completely is the keyword there. I have grown comfortable with the struggles and downs in my life. I am not normalizing my bad days with depression and anxiety for all human beings as a whole, but at the same time I’m not making them out to be something abstract in my life. You grow to hate and love your disabilities as you grow up with them more, some would consider this a toxic relationship, others who are disabled would probably understand what I’m saying a little better without the analogy. They become a part of your identity. They’ve taught you so much about yourself, good and bad, and like this, you don’t necessarily grow fond of them but can’t picture things without them in your life. For someone with high functioning anxiety that possibility gives me a lot of anxiety, ironic right? There’s no exact answer I can give that would satisfy anyone so I’ll give you an answer that would satisfy me first and foremost.
I’ve realized that even though I’m part of the disabled community I can’t say sweeping statements like “we all don’t need or want a cure to get rid of it.’ Some folks who are disabled do. They want to seek treatment and be done with their disability. It wreaks more havoc on some people’s lives than it does others, and that needs to be acknowledged, but the opposite also needs to be acknowledged. Not all people with disabilities wish to cure themselves and rid themselves of their disabilities. In many ways, I am one of those people. There shouldn’t be this fixation on a binary either, “either you want to be cured or not make up your mind.” It’s not that simple. Disabilities can get progressively worse, more manageable, and better with treatment and care so even if I say I want to be cured one day the next whole week I might disagree with you. That’s also something people often assume disabled people don’t do. We can change our minds just like you! We are not static but dynamic. Our experiences and feelings work in the same way. The fixation shouldn’t be on why we want to be cured or not, but on curing society of its systemic ableism and providing accessibility and equality for all disabled folks. It bewilders me that people are more dead set on these questions than actually caring for the disabled people in their lives and communities in the now.
I want to be free of my disabilities more on the bad days, and I mean the really bad days. These bad days often happen before or during something really important I should give my full attention to, but I can’t because I’m too busy falling apart. There’s not a lot of people who wouldn’t want to say goodbye to their disabilities these days. However, more than anything I want to change the way I respond to these bad days and bad thoughts. I want to grow more powerful. I want to grow to be stronger than them. But how am I supposed to do these things with inadequate access to care and people that understand me and my background? Tell me where I can find a queer Latinx femme in my area to give me therapy. I’d love the help, to be honest. How am I supposed to do these things when I know it’s not my disability that people have the problem with it, but the discomfort it brings them.
“When people suggest that my life would be better without my disability, it feels like they’re rejecting me as a person.” — Wendy Lu @everydayfeminism.com
You make me feel more ashamed of my disabilities asking these questions than cared for. That should tell you something about your approach. Important note: asking disabled people “why don’t you just do this,” “wouldn’t you want to do this and that to cure it,” and “you probably wish you were never born with it,” are not helpful. They do nothing except satisfy your view that able-bodiedness is normal and acceptable and that everyone should fall under your view of what is normal, which is not me. How am I supposed to believe you see me as an equal and your friend if you’re asking things like this?
I want treatment and good health care like anyone. Those things are still important, but that’s making my life better. Those are not cures. Alice Wong, the founder of the Disability Visibility Project, explained that treatments like spinal fusion surgery were helpful but they weren’t cures. They made their life better but weren’t this complete cure that people imagine all disabled people have access to, sorry imagine is the wrong word, more like wish.
“When cure functions as a type of social control or pressure to eradicate disability communities, it becomes the opposite of liberation. Especially for people whose disabilities don’t have cures, this mindset can make them feel trapped or inadequate.” -Eli Clare Brilliant Imperfection
Do I need a cure to be considered more valuable and digestible for your consumption? Why do my disabilities make you so uncomfortable? Did your question come from this uncomfortability and fear of my disabilities rather than out of a place of genuine care for your friend?
Ask yourself these questions before you ever ask me something like this.
What makes you more upset and uncomfortable, the lack of accessibility and equality for disabled individuals, or our disabilities themselves? I advise you to free yourself from your ableism and uncomfortability with people with disabilities first and foremost. You have more unlearning and fixing to do than me. I hope you spend less energy on asking these kinds of questions and more on advocating for disabled folks and centering their voices and desires, not yours. I want to be free of a lot of things. Capitalism, systemic racism, white supremacy, imperialism, colonization, the military-industrial complex, ableism, sexism, homophobia, police brutality and violence, nativism, ethnocentrism, pollution, poverty, global warming, prison industrial complex, ICE, anti-immigrant rhetoric, and the list goes on. These all inform each other and piggyback off one another in many ways by the way. They also contribute to ableism and the pain disabled folks feel every day. Imagine if we could free others and me of these things? Wouldn’t that be nice?
“Don’t you wish they had a cure for it?”
Oh, what it would be like to have a magical elixir that fully cured major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, insomnia, and the list goes on. I wouldn’t want it in any form. I don’t need to be cured. I don’t need to be fixed. I’m not a defective product, I may be one in your eyes, but that’s because you think able-bodiedness is the golden standard. Sorry, you think I’m a defective product that had the misfortune of being manufactured wrong, but I don’t exist to please you.
This hyper-focus on a cure for disabled people has actually worked against us. Often when people tell me of this magical cure I need to get my hands on, it’s after I just mentioned an accessibility issue or an ableist action. It’s almost like telling me “Hey I know that bothers you but when you get fixed it won’t anymore! It’ll happen soon!” For some of us it won’t happen soon, this “full cure” might not happen at all. You ignore the issues of accessibility I face in the present and instead dismiss my words to make sure I focus on a “future cure”, and that I stop calling out ableist actions and lack of adequate resources for us now. Some people do want to be “cured,” not all, as some disabilities can have effects that are worse than others, but just hoping and praying that one comes for them instead of providing support, resources, and care now is not making things easier for us. What about our daily needs? While we are waiting for this “cure” where is your care for our daily needs and lives in the meantime? Where is your energy to make sure we are included in all spaces? Where is your activism and labor for fighting for disabled lives in the now? Do you know disabled folks who are BIPOC, undocumented, and lgbtqia+ are even more vulnerable? Where’s your action and advocacy in this regard as well? Your lack of care towards calling out ableism and lack of accessibility for us will not help anyone reach this supposed “cure,” and it will only reinforce this idea that society doesn’t need to fix its structure. We need to fix ours by putting pills, injections, and medicine into our bodies. We need to stay silent, take our meds, trust our doctors, trust our caretakers and I guess pray for the best in your eyes. There are many things I wish they had a cure for, but my disabilities are at the bottom of that list. For many disabled folks, it’s the same. Their disabilities are part of their identity and indisposable.
Cure enforced narratives aren’t helping any of us. If you’re in the lab working on a cure kudos to you science isn’t easy, but ask yourself why do you want there to be a cure so bad? I understand if you’ve seen disabled folks or your friends struggling because of their disability, and maybe you think “this can help them be happier,” but here’s an idea instead of assuming what will make them happier and what they need a cure for, how about asking them what their ideas are on these things first. How are you going to assume what disabled folks feel and want? Many of these cure-focused narratives are harmful because they do exactly that. They assume disability is wrong and makes someone defective, so they must repair us and make us “whole” again. Sure I want treatment and accessible care, but not a cure. And it will continue to be that way. I want to lead a better life not a completely new one that caters to your desires.
“Maybe you should go off your meds and try to find more natural remedies”
Ah yes, maybe I should do some yoga, some aromatherapy, go to one of those cycling classes you always go to. I’ll throw my meds in the trash and just rely on some chamomile tea to help me go to sleep! I have so much free time and the ability to go to yoga classes, cycling classes, and getting all the latest essential oils like you! Wrong. If I didn’t have my meds I’d be in a much worse place. Without sufficient access to seeing a therapist often and having sessions, I have to rely on them more so than others. I have tried different meds, some have worse side effects than others, but I finally found one that helps me just a bit more. I was off them for 2 weeks once and I was at my lowest point during those times, something yoga and mantras couldn’t do anything to help. Yes, I know the pharmaceutical and medical industry isn’t the best by any means. They profit off of giving us more medications and making us seek out more treatments sometimes we don’t even need. But I need my meds. I literally cannot go off them for long periods because I’ve become so used to them my body has as well. Medication is one of my survival tools as of now, and I’m not about to rid myself of one of my survival tools to satisfy your needs and do yoga with the white vegan instructor you highly recommend. My meds aren’t the problem. Inequality, being lower-income, being from a Latinx community, living in an incredibly ableist society, and being villainized and othered by the world creates more barriers to getting better than the meds ever will. Your “treatment” may work for some, but it doesn’t for me. I’ve tried. Many people have. You do not need to give treatment suggestions. You do not need to tell me how I should “properly” care for myself. My disabilities don’t stop me from making coherent choices of my own. I am capable of making my own choices, I know shocker right? Disabled people making their own choices probably sounds like a myth to you.
“Well, aren’t you suffering from it all?”
Yes, all people who are disabled are suffering. We all feel that we’re in an escapable hell. Is that the answer you want to hear? It’s true but most of the time we’re not suffering solely because we’re disabled, we’re suffering because society never made space for us from the start, and it continues to. We weren’t incorporated into ideas of normality, we were the “exceptions”, “the deviations.” I have my bad days, like anyone else. I have days when I feel so down I physically can’t do anything, so do other people that are not disabled. I have long-lasting depressive episodes where I’m mentally and physically exhausted. I have times where my body aches so bad because I can’t get up to get meals. I also have good days, like you. I have really amazing days sometimes, where I’m with those who make me feel at home. I have days where I’m so thankful I’m still alive. I have had days where that wasn’t the case, and I feel suffering would suffice as a description. In general, though, I’m not suffering. I’m having more trouble than most, but I am still living an alright life. To think all of us are suffering? For the majority of our life? It implies that we are to be pitied, we live such horrendous lives, need so much care, and that we are less capable than others. If we are less capable then it’s normal for disabled folks to have less power and autonomy over their lives. You know saying that disabled people suffered was a way eugenicists justified killing disabled people not that long ago? They were “finally freeing us from our disabilities.” Some people do feel their disabilities make them suffer often, but not every disabled person, and not 24/7. And often, our disability isn’t the only thing making us suffer but the way you and others view us. We suffer because of your ignorance and inaction on behalf of our lives.
“You’re so brave for getting through it all”
Getting through my day to day life is not some extraordinary heroic act, it’s something we all do. Disabled people are not here to be your source of inspiration or your good deed for the day. Stop making us suffer and recognize that we exist, our existence is valid, and that we are constantly fighting to make people know of our existence. We are not mistakes. We are not manufacturing errors. We are human just like you. My disabilities don’t make me braver. I am not sorry they make you uncomfortable. I am not sorry that they make you feel uneasy about how to approach me. I am not sorry they confuse you. I am not sorry that I confuse you because of all my answers to these questions. The only thing I am sorry about is that you and I grew up in a society where they made you see me and my disabilities as less. As something deviant from the standard. They don’t feel like a tragedy to me. They don’t make me less capable. They don’t make me a charity case you can put your pity upon. They don’t make me abnormal. They don’t make me feel like I lost out in life, because I don’t function and think like everyone else. They just make me me, and that’s all there is to it.
I only hope you’ll accept them so I can feel that you actually accept me and my other disabled folks.
