Last night, I decided to look for some new pins/badges to indicate my asthma disability. I had a few that I liked, but as is the nature of pins, they fall off and get lost. These are useful to have if I have an asthma incident in public so people can know what is wrong with me and help accordingly.
So I opened up Etsy.com and searched “asthma badge”.
These (and more) were just on the first page of results:
Another one of those straws has been placed on top of the camel, and the camel is about to go into a homicidal rampage.
It enrages me to even feel like I have to explain this, but there is something about the specific targeting of medically vulnerable that abled people simply do not understand. (Please, for fuck’s sake, study fascism you fucks.) The sole purpose of these pins and badges is to murder people like me. They are pretending to have the same disability as I have to do it, and spreading disinformation to enable others to do it.
I haven’t had a hug from another human in over two years. I can’t see any lung doctors despite multiple recent attacks because of the mass numbers of new people with lung condition and the hospitals aren’t even using masks properly. Every time I have an attack and stop breathing, that’s a trip to a hospital filled with Covid that will probably kill me. I’m in daily pain, hourly even, from the broken tooth I can’t get fixed (asthma meds are bad for your teeth) and the lump in my leg that causes severe sciatic issues. All because of the people like the ones selling and wearing these pins.
I went to sleep angry, and I woke up angry. I want to scream at the world. I want to explain what is happening so someone will listen. But after years of tracking fascists and the immense toll of fleeing the US because of the death threats, just going through a page on Etsy to screenshot some propaganda is so mentally and emotionally taxing, that I will need to heavily medicate myself as soon as I’m done writing this.
Since my most recent asthma attack in December, I have been struggling. There is no one to bunker with me, no one in my bubble. I have no mental, emotional, or financial support. It was the closest I have ever been to death, and any part of me that wanted to try to not be angry has left my body. Perhaps my last fuck to give was pissed out in my pants when I had the seizure.
This morning I had to take the train to get groceries and three people on the platform blew cigarette smoke in my face. I almost punched one of them in the face. I still might. At this point, I’m afraid of harming my visa by ending up in an altercation with some unmasked dickhole. But I can’t retreat to my friends to commiserate, because they’re also living their abled lives. Dinners. Brunches. Travel. Parties. The message is loud and clear. “Sucks to be you. *sad face emoji*” I can’t talk about the impacts of any of this without being dismissed or ignored because it makes them feel bad and uncomfortable.
There have been a few decent articles to come out in the past few days explaining why sick people are so upset. But I don’t think anything widely circulated has any real weight to it. Everyone is still tiptoeing around the eugenics of it all. There is nothing I’ve read that makes me feel seen or heard.
These articles want you to know just how reasonable the vulnerable are, how they just want to nicely ask for some accommodations.
I want you to know that I am well past coddling. Healthy people are the ones who should be doing all the work the rest of us are doing to fight this fascist nonsense. Fuck the healthy. Fuck your genocidal bullshit. Fuck your compliance. Unless you want to do something actually helpful like beating the shit out of those selling and wearing badges that say “I can’t wear a mask, I’m asthmatic”, I don’t want to hear a fucking word from you ever again. Fuck being reasonable. I’ll be reasonable when I’m dead.
I know people have been lying about medical conditions to not wear masks. I know that this propaganda has been circulating for years. But having your specific disability weaponized against you and shoved in your face when you are just trying to do things to protect yourself is just enough to drive a girl mad. As we say in dog training, I am “over threshold”. I’m not languishing in the limbo of lockdown. The longer this goes on, the longer I will be in pain or dying unable to seek medical help or safely exist anywhere. I am well past sad, disappointed, or anxious. I am fucking angry.
I want all healthy people to be as isolated as I am. I want all healthy people to be in as much pain as I am. I want them to feel grief and suffering for once in their fucking lives in the hopes that their empathy switch gets kicked on. Fuck everyone spreading propaganda and plague. Fuck everyone who won’t even bother to think about people like me. And fuck Etsy.
