no clever or witty title this time around, just a rant about ✨rampant ableism✨, because I am ✨PISSED ✨😃

I am not even content warning this one because I am so enraged, and you're just going to have to deal with it. 

I am turning 36 in a little over a month and I have a lot of feels about it.

And, like, age is just a number, and when you have the maelstrom of both neurodivergence which hinders your ability to conceptualize time, you have lost years--decades, even-- to trauma, and what you actually suspect is some sort of cognitive development hindrance, you are met with unbelievable ableism. I find myself being constantly infantilized, and then mercilessly rediculed for it. More often than not, my numerical age is being leveraged against me, and *literal disabilities* and *disfigurements* are being treated like I am "immature," "spoiled," and "whiny."

When I blew both of my knee caps open (to the point where there were chunks of my knee caps missing), and a couple years before that when I broke my now *permanently broken* foot, no one in my life could be bothered to make my life so much as a modicum less awful. I was accused of "faking" my limps and my injuries, even though I could not walk, and would have to cross a dangerous highway at night, and then walk along a road that has neither side walks nor street lights and then again up a steep driveway, I knew better than to ask for help. I was already being labeled as "spoiled," and "whiny," and "faking" my injuries, even though I am now *permanently disfigured*. Read that again, I am now *permanently disfigured*. I *legally cannot drive* because of my PTSD symptoms, and I am more often than not met with the response that I am JUST NOT TRYING ENOUGH, and that I am IMMATURE, and STUNTED. Not, that, you know, my brain is fucking BROKEN. I am a deeply rooted fear of neglect and abandonment from being neglected and abandoned, and then basically being...further neglected and abandoned my entire life.

My not driving is seen as a me problem, as being spoiled, immature, whiny, and basically a loser--not that, you know, the US has terrible, non-existent infrastructure that continually fails the environment and its own citizens. Even with severe, debilitating injuries which left me permanently disfigured, I knew better than to ask for help, because I would just be told I was being "whiny."

My physical inability to drive, as designated by the DMV itself, is seen as me JUST NOT TRYING HARD ENOUGH.

Get me TF off of this god forsaken planet.

Those memes making fun of women who think they look younger than they do people--whom I thought were my friends, but I GUESS NOT, were sharing really, really set off the PISSED OFF switch in my brain. Look, I know, for a quantifiable fact, that I look significantly younger than I am "supposed to" as my physical age. In FACT, it has, in many cases, been to my detriment, because, again, ✨rampant ableism✨.

Listen, if you really think those memes apply to me, if you secretly hate or resent me, if you are making fun of me behind my back, please, just leave my fuckin' life. LEAVE. Moisturize your own God forsaken face and leave me. If you are jealous of one of the very few things I have going for me, leave. If you really feel this way or think underhanded "jokes" are appropriate, knowing that I only very recently stopped seeing my face and my body as "foreign" objects, knowing that I struggle with even the idea of being perceived, please, pack your hateful, wrinkled bags and get TF out of my life, immediately, if not sooner. If you want to feel bad about yourself, feel bad about yourself, that is none of my business, but what IS my business if you feeling bad about yourself being projected onto me. I WILL NOT feel bad about myself because YOU feel bad about yourself. I have spent a lifetime of dealing with the people who were supposed to support and protect me, not. I don't need my chosen family also doing this.

This person, who has never once until recently felt of this earth, who has somehow mitigate the horrors of existence and the great discomfort of being perceived, who never had a childhood, who lost decades of their life to trauma, now, finally has the skin and the face they've always wanted and finally have their broken body to a place of fitness and appearance they have always wanted, at 36 years old--and people whom they thought were their friends, absolutely cannot stand this person breaking out of the role of "the pity friend." I am sorry that you've based part of your own identity on a secret oneupmanship with someone who is NOT competing with you. Let me tell you something, right here, right now, I am too fucking  neurodivergent for this.

Take your insecurities and leave me alone.