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People give too much power to labels. It can feel exclusionary, whether intentional or not.
Dotty and 2 other people liked this
“There're always more truths than one. Knowing who I am, or thinking I might know? That's only half a truth. Because my identity will always be halfway informed by the world. It has to be informed by something. Usually we define ourselves by loving things, Doc Martens or Shakespeare or music or whatever. But if the things we love are other people, those people define us. And then they're a part of you, and they change what you know about yourself.”
― Wild and Crooked
― Wild and Crooked
“But that's the thing - outsiders lump kids with CP under the same umbrella, and that's another umbrella under the enormous parasol of congenital disorders, which sits under the gargantuan black canopy of disability. We're sorted into categories, but we can be nothing alike. I don't even mean how some of us are hemiplegic and others are paraplegic, or how some of us are spastic and others aren't, or some of us have learning disabilities and others don't. I mean on a perso al level, we're all different people.
That should be obvious right?
Camp Wigwah is where I realized my disability is like any other part of a person - eyes or ears or teeth or height - and that it's a variable. I have poor eyesight, and the muscles on my right side are tense threads that make my knees collide. But Karen Yuen's in a wheelchair, and Ali Sniridan spasms every evening.
I started thinking of CP as a part of me, and I stopped resenting it so much. It seems dumb to ask your eye color to change. An AFO isn't bad when you think of it like a pair of glasses. I love my glasses; they're one fashion accessory that demands no explanation.
That's how the space brace came about. Mom and Tamara were trying to make me love myself. But it's harder when it's someone else's decision.”
― Wild and Crooked
That should be obvious right?
Camp Wigwah is where I realized my disability is like any other part of a person - eyes or ears or teeth or height - and that it's a variable. I have poor eyesight, and the muscles on my right side are tense threads that make my knees collide. But Karen Yuen's in a wheelchair, and Ali Sniridan spasms every evening.
I started thinking of CP as a part of me, and I stopped resenting it so much. It seems dumb to ask your eye color to change. An AFO isn't bad when you think of it like a pair of glasses. I love my glasses; they're one fashion accessory that demands no explanation.
That's how the space brace came about. Mom and Tamara were trying to make me love myself. But it's harder when it's someone else's decision.”
― Wild and Crooked
“Live long enough, and all things you ever loved can turn around to scorch you blind. The wonder is that you could start life with nothing, end with nothing, and lose so much in between.”
― Demon Copperhead
― Demon Copperhead
“Was this me now, for life? Taking up space where people wished I wasn't? Once on a time I was something, and then I turned, like sour milk. The dead junkie's kid. A rotten little piece of American pie that everybody wishes could just be, you know. Removed.”
― Demon Copperhead
― Demon Copperhead
“I was born to wish for more than I can have. No little fishing hole for Demon, he wants the whole ocean. And on from there, as regards the man-overboard. I came late to getting my brain around the problem of me, and still yet might not have. The telling of this tale is supposed to make it come clear. It's a disease, a lot of people you tell you that now, be they the crushed souls under repair at NA meetings or the doctors in buttoned-up sweaters. Fair enough. But where did it come from, this wanting disease? From how I got born, or the ones that made me, or the crowd I ran with later? Everybody warns about bad influences, but it's these things already inside you that are going to take you down. The restlessness in your gut, like tomcat's gone stupid with their blood feeds, prowling around in the moon - dead dark. The hopless wishes that won't quit stalking you: some perfect words you think you could say to somebody to make them see you, and love you, and stay. Or could say to your mirror, same reason.
Some people never want like that, no reaching for the bottle, the needle, the dangerous pretty face, all the wrong stars. What words can I write here for those eyes to see and believe? For the lucky, it's simple. Like the song says, This Little Light Of mine. Don't let Satan blow it out. Look farther down the pipe, see what's coming. Ignore the damn tomcats. Quit the dope.”
― Demon Copperhead
Some people never want like that, no reaching for the bottle, the needle, the dangerous pretty face, all the wrong stars. What words can I write here for those eyes to see and believe? For the lucky, it's simple. Like the song says, This Little Light Of mine. Don't let Satan blow it out. Look farther down the pipe, see what's coming. Ignore the damn tomcats. Quit the dope.”
― Demon Copperhead
Darby’s 2025 Year in Books
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