What do you wish you could do more every day?
Read. Write. Cook. Bake. Activities of daily living, as the community care folk call it. Wishes I dare not voice anymore to a harsh universe. Being able to go where I want, when I want, without having to prepare my energy reserves, think about my routine route every time, trying to remember what to do when the inevitable thoughtless behaviour crops up. Maybe someone hogging the disabled seats. Maybe hoping and praying someone will request my stop as the TTC in its wisdom put the buttons out of reach unless you can stand on a moving vehicle.
That’s why I hate the TTC. And am glad the pandemic means I don’t have to use the rage-inducing, anti-disabled system again.
There was a group at the TTC’s head office who wanted to make the system inclusive, but senior Execs couldn’t care less. And they have the final say. Just read my blog at pario.blogspot.com for all the ways TTC hates on the 22% (now with long COVID, I believe it’s upwards of 25%). That’s 7% more disabled in Canada than the global average. Maybe we save more lives so we can live isolated above ground instead of below.
I put to bed everyday and exciting-future dreams decades ago when my job became self-advocacy, self-driven concussion recovery. That job continues to today. And I hate it. Would I even be able to dream again? I don’t dream at night nearly as much as before my injury. My nights were like movies then. They became black voids of nothing after two drivers crashed into the car I was in. Dreams crept back in, a bit here, a bit there with gamma brainwave enhancement therapy. Dreams help us process emotions and events. Without dreams, it’s harder to navigate the world. So many ways damage to our neurons fucks us up. And doctors who worship at the altar of drugs and DSM, who insist strategies are cognitive therapy and rest is wonderful, don’t give a fuck about our real, rest-filled lives of little energy and no restedness.
It’s a bad day.
“It’s a dark and dirty world,” sang the musician on the radio. Yes, it is. And Canadians keep voting for more of the same, eyes fixed on grasping their dollars and hope out of the hands of the weak while calling themselves followers of God and progressive atheists.
