Hello, reader. How you doing? I’m so busy, working hard to build a more loving world. And I’m always fat, which is work in and of itself. I’m dodging barrels of harm like Mario in Donkey Kong. Disabled too! It’s been years now I’ve known it’s my destiny to be in the tank brigade. If I live long enough to get disabled-er, I’ll be there.
pain
My mobility is so so! I have not much endurance due to my muscles and cardiovascular system, and due to pain. Also balance isn’t always the best, and I don’t know where I am in space. Uneven surfaces are a struggle.
Have you ever seen me use stairs? Stairs are wack. I take it slow and step downstairs sideways, gripping the handrail.
I feel pain you probably don’t know about. My knees and hips whimper at times. My shoulders and neck cry and cry.
I could explain about hypermobile joints, lower back, muscles, lymph, and impinged nerves. Suffice to say some difficulty is there. It’s EDS, but the physical therapy as cure is almost as bad as the syndrome. I haven’t had a physical therapist yet who helped me feel ok about what we were doing to my body.
Consent is everything. The environment of the office is always sporty, and I’m not the intended audience. I’m not a rich person who hurt my elbow playing tennis; I’ve lived a life of chronic pain and violence. I mean my body has had a hard time as I’ve held it stiffly in terror, flooded with stress hormones in a world that overwhelms me. Physical therapy offices are sensory hell too.
I used to think it was the dudes, and a physical therapist of another gender would do better. But the ladies were just as bad. We need trauma-informed physical therapy!
But wait, why am I telling you about this? Oh, this post is about the tank brigade.
mobility aids
“Why don’t you get the mobility aid now?” my dear friend asked.
We were at the river, conversing about anarchy, community, and disability.
“Then you can go more places!” they continued. “You could go as far as you want to.”
“Well,” I said. “I could get a scooter now, but I don’t know if I could afford it. I would need a vehicle that could transport it. Then also I’d need somewhere to store it….”
Me and Ming’s apartment qualifies as tiny home, and I struggled to imagine a good parking space for a scooter.
“Oh, I guess insurance wouldn’t cover it,” my friend said.
money and proof
I thought about my avoidance of mainstream medicine and how I don’t have much paper trail. Hmm, do I have diagnoses to justify a scooter to insurance?
No, I’ve complained about pain in medical contexts rarely and have received almost no diagnoses. They dismiss my pain, saying it’s because I’m fat.
The pain is so significant that I have trouble doing many things, and the medical harm I’ve endured is so significant… Also, I have weird settings. I spent most of my life believing that the sensations I’ve felt were no big deal and my body didn’t matter. I thought my pain didn’t count.
tank brigade
Please join me in imagining the tank brigade. We show up for protests with our scooters, and we fuck shit up.
We block areas that need blocking off to protect other protesters. Maybe we confuse and mystify. We can slow things down, and we can zip forward to convey a message. Sometimes we hold banners. We might decorate our scooters in stimulating, mind-expanding art ways. We might distract when that’s helpful.
Protesters who need to be unseen could hide behind our widths. Kind of how I offer to help friends shoplift, which I never get taken up on.
“I could stand between you and the camera and try to be extra fat,” I say, which never gets a laugh. People are often weird about theft, weird about fatness, or both.
Members of the tank brigade might be harder to arrest due to the weight of our equipment. Harder to arrest if they need to get a special van.
dreaming
Just want you to know about my dreams, reader. The future is disabled, and I want to be part of that future.
What’s your role in the revolution? Usually I think of myself as
- Den Parent
- kitchen witch hearth tender
- zinester
- designated feeler
- food bank lentil cooker
- circulator of birthday cards
- comforter of the distressed
- disabled dance organizer
- tarot reader
- radical mental healther
- Disability Justice squeaky wheel
- painter of beautiful signs
Oh yes, the things I do now. Perhaps we’re in the revolution, even as we speak.
These days I don’t go to the front lines, so tank brigade all of a sudden would be overwhelming. But I could plan aftercare, save up spoons, make sure my scooter is charged, invest in some adult diapers in case I get caged without bathroom for a long time, cry, and try.
