“Question: how can someone be so disabled that they can’t walk three blocks to their polling place and need to file an absentee ballot? =\”

This facebook post from one of my housemates (who I will call Tom) appeared in my notifications this morning, and I was immediately angry. Despite (correctly) assuming it was about our mutually antagonistic housemate (who I will call Rachel), it was far from appropriate. Lemme break it down.

1. I wish people would stop frumping about things that don’t affect them. Is Tom’s life affected if Rachel gets an absentee ballot? He’s not having the deliver or count the ballot.
2.  Tom might have had Rachel in mind when he typed this, but putting in ‘someone’ means ‘anyone meeting the qualifications of this statement’ not ‘this one person I’m pissed at’. This means that aaaaaaanyone that can’t walk three blocks to their polling place gets a :/. Including a mutual acquaintance who is a polio survivor who can’t walk. At all. Also, going anywhere is a production since a wheelchair is small and cute to what she usually needs to get around. Of course, the sweeping statement also includes anyone else who has a disability that prevents walking or making the three block trip. Wired to a machine at home like my great grandfather? Serious back problems? Any number of other ailments? :/ to you, I guess.
3.  Disabled people… generally don’t choose to be disabled. Just a little observation. Kinda like how people don’t get to choose their skin color, gender, gender identification, sexual orientation and on and on. Well, I guess some (and only some) of them could have chosen to die instead of getting the medical procedures that saved their lives but left them dependent on x machine or without y mobility. Just a touch insensitive to say a person’s life is worth less than the inconvenience of… them getting an absentee ballot.

To help illustrate the last reason, here’s the response Tom’s beau posted to his comment after I’d left for work, “Especially consideri

Huh. A friend from high school just sent me a link to a MLP:FiM meet up group… and I’m feeling slightly better. Still don’t want to eat despite hunger, but now I’ve pleasant visions of colorful ponies.

…is the mood swings.

I’m fine, feel that warm fuzzy feeling called happiness, go about life just fine. Guilt strikes for being okay, for having fun with my friends because shouldn’t I be more upset? We were dating for over five years. Is he still hurting? How can I be alright when it’s been such a short time? What is the appropriate amount of pain to suffer from losing the person you love to your inability to move half way across the country with no guarantee you won’t end up homeless? Of course, I can’t wallow in depression I reason with myself. I have to go work, to a job that reminds me just how far away from my dreams I’ve fallen. A job with a manager whose idea of ‘managing’ involves unnecessary lectures full of insulting repetition, lies and threats of job loss. The job he thinks I’d stay here for. Yet, it’s the safest place from the sweeping bouts of depression because you have to smile at the customers, and boy, do I smile. I get compliments on my upbeat personality and sunny smile almost every other shift. Sometimes it follows me home, and I’m fine again. I talk with my housemates and we make jokes, watch stupid movies and I have fun…

…and then I feel wretched and guilty.

She got me photoshop~