Hello, reader. How are you doing? Do you know why uneven floors hurt?
There’s a place I love. The buildings were made in quirky ways decades ago. One building I love the most, the Barn, holds the main kitchen. But I can’t spend time there because of the floors: I always injure myself.
I want to explain why uneven floors hurt, because people who are abled might not have given a lot of thought. Maybe my explanation can help with access. This is disability justice.
the Barn
Imagine a large, gorgeous barn. Inside there’s a commercial kitchen. It has two big, serious metal ovens with ranges. There’s a kitchen altar. It has a convection oven, and many fridges–some which work, and some which serve as pantries with glass doors.
There are the commercial sinks, and an area with spices. There are smaller hand washing sinks, a shelved area with dishes…
There’s tons of art, altars to honor faeries who died, books on a shelf, a black couch, tables with chairs, a washer and drier. There’s a Crow’s Nest with stairs, and a pantry room which is kept cool– that’s where the chest freezers are.
There are islands, like big rectangles of counter space with storage underneath. And a long counter space island with storage underneath which is used as the food serving area. There’s a coffee area, a tea area, and a snack place.
disabled
Then imagine me. I’m disabled in a few different ways. I’m also fat. Thank you for loving me as I am.
My mobility issues are due to joint instability and chronic pain in my legs and lower back, especially my knees and hips. I have hypermobile joints, which is a definite diagnosed lifelong problem. Also I have scoliosis, arthritis, and bone spurs in my lower back. Other issues which are not diagnosed might contribute also.
When I spend time in the Barn, I injure myself. Walking on the uneven floors is why. Usually people are in the Barn, and I used to say that I can’t track the people, and track the unevenness of the floor at the same time. I considered it a cognitive fail assisted by the mobility issues that give me the proclivity for injury.
Then I spent time in the Barn alone and with just Ming, and I still injured myself. Ok, so my theory was wrong. It’s not my mind– it’s just my body and how it responds to the floor.
why uneven floors hurt
There are single stairs in unusual places, inside the Barn. The stairs are not uniform, and there are no handrails. I do my best to remember where the stairs are and do my best to see them. But I’m often carrying something or thinking about the activity that’s next.
Also there are places on the floor where the floor has a little hill. When I trip, my body panics for a moment. Adrenaline shoots through my body. I take a step, the floor isn’t where my foot thinks it will be, I trip, and the panic of being about to fall means my step is unusual. I strain muscles, strain joints, and it causes a great deal of pain.
When you’re about to fall and catch yourself, the step is using muscles differently than a normal step. Because of my disabilities, this leads to injury. The injury means days of extra pain on top of a baseline pain load which is already too much to bear.
sad
Then I feel sad because I love that Barn, and I love helping with food. Sometimes I’m crying about the physical pain of the injury, and sadness from being excluded gets mixed in with my tears.
What can be done? Who can make a new floor? There’s no one to blame about how it was made; it’s important to move forward. I don’t have thousands of dollars to fix the floor, or a bunch of friends who can do construction. On the list of building projects, fixing the floor for reals is not the land project’s priority. For most people, the floor works.
But this is how ableism hurts. No one person is harming me through discrimination or cruelty. The world is just set up for abled people. Exclusion is quiet because the disabled people don’t usually band together and demand something different.
Usually we stop showing up, and the problem is invisibilized. The more empowered of us speak up once or twice, then give up in frustration.
extrapolate
Thank you for reading about why uneven floors hurt. Please extrapolate from this example to countless situations disabled people find ourselves in, where we’re injured and excluded.
The exclusion of disabled people hurts all of us by reducing diversity. Thank you for caring about community.
