I’m 38 and I Can’t Support Myself Anymore
The ideal person under capitalism is tireless, independent, resilient, endlessly capable of overriding their own limits in service of output. You may be severely injured and anemic but don’t you dare skip gym day.
When you become chronically ill or disabled, you begin to understand how deeply this ideology has embedded itself into the psyche. The shame of no longer being able to work consistently feels personal. As though my body’s inability to keep pace with capitalism says something fundamental about who I am.
It’s there every time you meet someone new and one of their first questions is, “What do you do?” They’re not asking about your passions, your hobbies, or the mundane human tasks that take up most of your time. They’re asking how you make money. How you turn yourself into income.
In this way, illness strips people not only of income but of social legitimacy. I didn’t just lose the ability to work consistently. I lost the cultural permission to feel worthy.
…I sometimes think disabled people are forced into a more honest relationship with reality than the culture around us. We cannot endlessly pretend our bodies are machines. We cannot always override pain through discipline and positive thinking. We are confronted, over and over again, with the fact that human beings are fragile.
Maybe this is part of why disability makes people uncomfortable. We interrupt the fantasy capitalism sells us: that worth can be earned and optimized through enough effort.
via Dense Discovery 399…Kai speaks of his mother:
She will likely walk again soon. Given her age though, this is less an injury than a preview. None of us get to opt out of this forever – no matter how ambitious or disciplined we are. The sooner we work out who we are without the output, the softer the transition.