Lauredhel brought to my attention a very important change in policy that Australia is looking to implement, redefining who has access to handicapped parking spaces. The background, and what you can do to help (if you’re in AU, PLEASE do; if not, if you know anyone in AU, PLEASE ask them to) is here, here, here, here and here.

Cara posted about it at Feministe. And we do love Cara, but the thread there (and at Hoyden About Town) quickly devolved into fail, several directions of fail in fact. I just want to walk you guys a little further in one of those directions with me.

Candace left the following comment:

As a PWD, just know that I agree with almost all of what you’ve said, Lillith. I’ve seen sooo many instances of abuse, most often of people carrying their many shopping bags out of the huge mall and then pulling out of their accessible parking space.

I understand why it is so viscerally frustrating to watch seemingly able-bodied people act totally able-bodied while also visibly taking advantage of privileges meant for disabled people. I think everybody gets that, on a deep level. But this feeling comes from many places within us, and uncomfortable though it may be to admit, most are rooted in internalized ableism.

Coldneedles responded:

I have chronic fatigue syndrome. I don’t currently need accessible parking, but I can imagine it in the future because I’ve been declining quite rapidly. I could then very well be your so called “abuser” of the system.

Want to know why?

Well, if I live by myself I will need to go shopping at some point. To do frivilous things like buying food and clothing. I will calculate that I will suffer more if I don’t carry heavy bags. because then I will need to come back and use my precious energy on more driving, walking and even getting presentable so I can go out. Once I get back from the mall I will collapse into bed and not be able to do anything for the rest on the day, possibly even the next two will be affected.

But you wouldn’t see that. Neither would you see the things I have to do to make sure I can go- resting before hand, taking medication, taking rest breaks in the mall itself.

Would it be better if I was denied an accessible parking space, merely because I can technically carry heavy bags? Even if that meant I could not go to the mall to supply my basic needs? Even if that meant public places were inaccesible to me?

Coldneedles, you are not the only one.

Before I moved out here to Pennsylvania, I spent a year living on my own in southern California, attending Cal State Fullerton in Orange County. Ultimately, that didn’t work out for me, but I put up a good fight before bowing out.

I spent my first six weeks in the dorms before being kicked out, because they provided no priority access to housing for students with disabilities or distant students (CSUF was four hours from my hometown of Visalia), with 800 bedspaces for a school of over 38,000 at the time. And then I moved to an apartment about five miles away, in Orange. I began school that year in June, and was without a car until the end of September, leaving me dependent on the public transportation system. In Orange County, that meant the buses. I’ve written about the experience before, here.

So to get food, I had to use the buses. The nearest bus stops were about a mile away from my apartment either way. Then it was a short ride down the street — about a mile — to the nearest grocery store. Then, the walk around the grocery store, and then making my way back to the bus stop — through the bus ride — and the walk back to my apartment from there — now carrying all those groceries.

My disability is, and was, invisible. I managed to make those trips for those first few months. I wouldn’t've made it as long as I did if I didn’t eventually get that car, though.

I had to make a calculation, every time: 1) how much can I reasonably carry? and 2) how often can I make this trip?

If I carried less, that made the trip easier. But it meant I was going to have to make that trip again much sooner, and overall more often. Which would end up dragging down my physical health much further. But there was a limit on how much I still could carry. And if I tried to overstuff my tired arms to keep from returning too soon, it made my condition considerably worse in the short-term and only marginally better in the long-term.

This also meant I had to buy many more processed and boxed foods, because I couldn’t get too much that could be outside the refrigerator or freezer for more than the hour or so it took me to get home (between bus connections and the walks), and because I only had so much energy to prepare food for myself when I was devoting all this energy just to buying the food and getting it home. And, of course, that meant poorer nutrition, which didn’t help my physical state much either.

It was a calculation I was destined to lose, pretty much.

So yes, you might have seen me — a tall, slim, healthy-looking 20-year-old woman with no visible deformities who walks upright with a normal gait — carrying bags of groceries and walking a considerable distance with them, including up the flight of stairs to my second-story apartment. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t disabled.

You also didn’t see me slump those bags to the floor at the doorway, with only just enough care to keep them out of the door’s way so I could slam it shut as I slumped my tired body to the floor/couch/bed, and resting a few minutes before putting away what had to be kept cold but leaving the rest for several hours later, when I had rested more and finally recovered enough to get up and move around again.

This is a calculation I go through every single day of my life. How much work do I take on, and how do I pace it?

Take today. The cats’ litter box desperately needs changed, but I don’t have any litter left. And I need new tights for a job interview tomorrow morning. So I had to go out. And I went to Wal-Mart. Because Wal-Mart had both tights and kitty litter. And it wasn’t going to do workers any better for me to drive to PetSmart and then to JC Penney or Kohls, the two choice’s I’d've had otherwise, than to get those things at Wal-Mart. So I went to fucking Wal-Mart.

And when I got there, I took a normal parking spot. And it was a fucking mistake. I do my best not to use my disabled placard unless I know that I absolutely need it, because there are never enough spaces, and I don’t know who else might come along who might need that proximity parking more than I do, and I feel guilty about it. Plus I like to avoid the glares from people when they see that young slim white chick step out of her bright red two-door with a sun roof and a spoiler on the back (which was the best car available to us in a hurry when I totaled our old beige sedan a year and a half ago) with that blue disabled placard hung from the rear view. The less I deal with that shit, the better.

So I parked about fifteen spots farther away than I would’ve parked with the disabled placard. And I got out of my car and walked in the door. And there were no carts.

I laughed about it with the couple right in front of me. They picked up a basket. I didn’t bother, because the litter wasn’t going to fit in it.

I could have walked all the way to the other end of the store to get a cart, or gone exploring the parking lot for a stray one. But that was a lot of walking I honestly did not feel I could do — so I decided I’d just get the cat litter last so I didn’t have to carry it around the store. And that was going to be a serious physical burden on me. But it was the least physical burdensome option I had available to me right then.

So I walked over to the “intimates” section in the middle of the store and grabbed a box of pantyhose, then trekked back to the side of the store I started at.

I also need some new hair stuff (which is as much a matter of comfort as it is of looks). And I know my husband hates sitting there while I look over all the different stuff that’s available and compare ingredients and compare prices and so forth. It can take me a little while. So I figured, because the hair-stuff aisle was right next to the cat-litter aisle, I would use this time to do my comparison shopping. No one else was in the aisle when I walked around the corner, and I kneeled down where the stuff I wanted to look at was, and started looking.

At that point, a middle-aged woman pushing a somewhat older woman in a wheelchair came in. And behind her, another woman pushing another woman in a wheelchair. The second said “excuse me” and I looked up, ready to straighten and move out of the way, but it turned out she was merely teasing the first couple of women, whom they apparently knew.

The assistant women (so to speak) strolled the older women down the aisle, asking “Do you prefer any certain brand?” and picking one thing up to show them, and so on. And it made me grateful that, at least for now, I can do that sort of comparison-shopping without having to ask someone else to fetch the things for me — because I know myself, and I know I’d feel too guilty and “prideful” asking for something like that. Those are the sort of situations where I throw my hands in the air and deal without — whether it’s something Really Important that is actually going to affect me quite negatively, or whether it’s looking for new hair-stuff, or whether it’s trying on clothes so I can look the way *I* want to — because that little voice in the back of my head starts repeating, “burden”… and I don’t feel like I have a right to any of those things, the minute someone else has to do anything for me to have it.

And I couldn’t help but feel guilty, in the middle of this conversation: I, the slim young girl, standing there between two boomer-age women in wheelchairs, trying my best to give them space and not get in their way — and I just wanted so much to be known as disabled, too.

I was finished perusing, for the most part, so I rounded the corner back to the cat litter and grabbed the small box — which costs me more money, but I can’t handle the giant pail, even if my husband carries it in and out for me, because it’s too heavy to lift and pour from when I’m actually doing the box. But the “small” box was still 21lbs.

And as I shoved the pantyhose under my left arm, and picked up the box of cat litter and started walking, the first couple of ladies also rounded the corner. And I had to say “excuse me” because we almost ran into each other.

And oh God: having just wanted to connect to these two women, to be recognized as disabled, too — here I am carrying a very heavy box of cat litter in my arms, without a cart or anything, right in front of them. And I thought: if I had made any mention of my disability before, what would they be thinking of me? Right now, it was just “able-bodied young girl.” But if I had, would it now be, “Faker“? “Abuser“? “Oh my God, I can’t believe she has the nerve to claim to be disabled, there she is carrying an awkwardly shaped twenty pound box with no assistance, just look at her“?

Me, a few days ago on a “good day” with my hair done and dressed up, and then today, with my hair pulled back in the first shirt and pants I picked up.

I made a beeline for the checkout lines, trying to maneuver between crowds of people without having to stop or stray too far from my path. And there was only one express checkout line open on this side of the store, and there were four people waiting in that line and nowhere to set this box down. So I went to the nearest regular line, where I could set the litter box down on the belt behind two women’s cartfulls of groceries, and stand there longer than I’d objectively have been standing in the checkout line — but without somewhere to set this box down. (Lifting from the ground is simply not feasible for me, period.)

These are the sorts of little tradeoffs people with chronic illness make all the time. I was so flushed and in so much pain at this point, standing there for five minutes longer actually hurt me considerably. But it was less hurt than I’d've sustained the other way.

So I waited, then it was my turn, and when the cashier didn’t give any indication of an intent to move the litter from the belt to the bagging area, I laughed lightly and said “Yeah, leave that there. I just couldn’t stand in the express lane holding this, I needed to set it down. There were no carts when I came in…”

Why did I feel like I had to justify myself?

So I swiped the credit card, put the bag with the pantyhose in it over my arm, took a breath and hefted the box up to my chest again. And I made a straight line toward the exit. And now, there were eight or so carts in the cart area. So I plopped my purchases down in the cart, to take out to my car. Which was about five times as far a walk (from store entrance to car) than if I’d have used that disabled spot…

And when I got to my car, of course, guess what was waiting there for me?

So: I was a seemingly healthy twenty-three-year-old who drove herself to the store, picked up that twenty pound box and carried it to the checkout line and then out the door. Can you imagine what people would say if they saw me carry that box straight to my blue-line parking spot?

I am a disabled woman. Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.