connection

It seems as if he is about to cry, he is so happy, and I’m am grateful for the mystery of why there are things you can give someone that will bring them joy, that perhaps there is this capability with all things.

She hugged me like I was the depository for the town’s bad luck and because I’d taken it, the town was free, her daughter was free. Some people believed that all the bad luck in the world was searching for a home and because it had chosen me, it would leave them alone. These people gave me their version of gratitude. I helped them see how free

How horrible, but also how real, how bright, that touch would have been. There was a power in being the object that pulls out people’s worst selves. There’s pleasure in moving away from the hopeful unknown and into cruelty’s indifferent absolute.

The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase of a relationship ends it can transform into something else. It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time.

As I did care web workshops, and as I lived in a small community in Seattle before and during the pandemic—a community that traded-off errands, food drop-offs, and housecleaning for each other—as I got deeper and deeper into figuring out my own care and access needs, especially around being autistic and plural, as we more and more dive deep into

All of this speaks to a major access factor: a trust in disabled people by disabled people, an openness to a practice of letting people experiment with access tools instead of locking up access and crip tools and doling them out balefully, one at a time.

When I can do the impairment-related parts of my routine around someone, that’s intimacy, a gift of letting each other into our most private worlds.

Open, honest, truth-telling individuals value privacy. We all need spaces where we can be alone with thoughts and feelings—where we can experience healthy psychological autonomy and can choose to share when we want to.