Work in Order of Appearance: Lindsay Booker ––– Front Cover Art Sarah Cavar ––– Editor’s Note Sarah Dauer ––– constitution of getting there, in multiple acts J.A.L. ––– My Brain Pics Deanna Kalian ––– What Does it Take to be Disabled? Anonymous ––– (untitled) Sarah Cavar ––– Charactering Anonymous ––– (untitled 2) Lindsay Booker –– Back Cover Art
Editor’s Note: The germ of an idea that would become this zine began growing inside my head long before such content as To The Bone and Atypical became available to the public. Unfortunately, shows and movies like these are nothing new, but rather small parts of a longstanding tradition: that is, the commodification of the sick, crazy, disabled, or neurodivergent experience; the packing of this experience into neat runtimes with sets and costumes and characters who can pull their respective disabilities on and off with ease. Most concerning is not that these works exist, but rather, that they are consumed with such enthusiasm not only by normal people (as it were) but also by people like us. The existence of such media packages us for neat forty-five minute or two-hour consumption. The implication, of course, is that we are an act produced for the enjoyment of abled people with normal brains. They can switch on Netflix and watch a conventionally attractive, charismatic, and fashionably underweight Lily Collins pretend to have an eating disorder; they can consume their popcorn with morbid fascination at the spectacle of a starving girl. Allistic (that is, non-Autistic) people can laugh at the antics of a (caricatured and misogynistic) Autistic young man who is developing sexual interest in young women. In the same vein are the ubiquitous documentaries and books of people with weird bodies; rare disabilities or illnesses that alone make them worthy of fame, an event unto themselves by mere virtue of their physical or mental condition! This is objectification in a very literal sense. As has historically been the case in carnivals and freak-shows the world over, this is one of the (relatively few) ways that people like us can make money. Think of the modern disability memoir or documentary; the tell-all on addiction or other illness; the “groundbreaking" media focusing on a neurodivergent person; as a freak show with a modern face. The purpose of this zine is to subvert the typical performance of brain-and-body -weirdness, by speaking out on the way we are, have been, and are expected to be represented. This zine is not merely meant to show that “disability / illness are not glamorous”: that notion has been beaten to death by many writers and creators before me. Rather, I only mean to compare the consumable, entertaining representations of us with the way we represent ourselves. To sum: put aside your movie snacks and morbid fascinations. Listen.
Love, Sarah Cavar
[Content Warning: implied self-harm]
constitution of getting there, in multiple acts Sarah Dauer dissolve utopia as both a radical and ethical act look at who you are speaking to for diaspora tastes like salt and movement takes time you part the red sea, hello trauma ENTER your high school guidance counselor dissolve the notion that you can’t be both, shelter hope like the cherry pit spit into your palm you have carried for years SETTING: sophomore year AT RISE: said guidance counselor, our secret is best kept not to trigger anyone commandments are more like guidelines, and your swagger screams too many problems not enough health insurance but in act 2, you wash your palms and red stain the sink, you are clean when he wanted to die after you and he didn’t, and you didn’t ENTER your body, crude mud under your nails
dissolve ambiguity as sin dissolve the candid as radical tell them what you wanted then and of the pit, delving roots as you ripen and are sown #
Brain Tetris J.A.L.
[Content Warning: disordered eating, weight, blood, hospitals, medication.]
What Does it Take to be Disabled? Deanna Kalian What does it take to be disabled? The quizzical expression gripping your face is all too familiar; The arched eyebrow cutting a jagged line across your forehead As I hear the ghost of the age-old question you’re too polite to ask: What’s wrong with you? I scuttle out of the handicap restroom, eyes averted, too timid to meet Your hostile gaze. You see my working limbs, the lack of cool metal supporting my body. You see my steady gait and stable posture. But what you don’t see is the rolling ocean in my gut, The rhythmic cramps seizing my core In such a regular tempo that I’ve learned to release my Clutches on my stomach, learned that the gesture I use To hold myself together betrays that I’m actually falling apart. You don’t see the agonizing hours spent writhing in a Hospital gown, or the flecks of crimson staining snow-white Tissue I’ve learned to ignore. You do see me hardly eating, But I’m overweight anyways so you think she could stand to lose A few pounds. Yet you don’t see the reason I abstain from food, foods like Gluten grains legumes nuts raw vegetables vegetables with seeds watery vegetables Watery fruits apples bananas dairy coffee caffeine chocolate soy Because withholding sustenance from my parched organs may alleviate My symptoms. I guess hunger is supposed to distract you. What does it take to be disabled? You don’t see the x-rays, the doctor’s notes slipped discreetly to puzzled teachers, The long car rides to Boston while the sky is still grey and the birds themselves doze. You don’t see the heavy resignation draped across my doctor’s face, My doctor who has treated me since birth, And you don’t hear him telling me “This is something I wouldn’t wish on anybody.” You also don’t hear him plead “You should never have to get used to pain,”
When pain has always been there, the too-real imaginary friend I never grew out of, The companion cradling me in its embrace Before even my mother had the chance. You don’t see me struggle to define who I am, since I’m not bad enough to legally count as disabled but I Can’t even function without my medications, can’t even Go anywhere without fearing an impending breakdown, can’t even do anything, just can’t. What does it take to be disabled? I’ll tell you what it takes. It takes everything. It takes my mind, Curling me up into a soggy ball on my high school’s bathroom Floor, stifling my sobs so the janitor can clean in peace. It takes my heart, morphing me into a shrill banshee who Wails at her mother because she just can’t take it anymore. It takes my soul, forcing over twenty prescriptions a day into my Unwilling jaw, watching my eyes glaze and face slack as I become A bare semblance of a human being. It takes my joy, it takes my love, it takes my passion, it takes my faith, it takes Everything that once defined me and wipes it away with a Cruel flick of the wrist, rewriting my story so I’m no longer the Heroine. It takes and takes and takes and takes and takes and takes Until there’s nothing more to take, and it even takes that nothing too. What’s wrong with you? I don’t think you have the time to hear the answer, and I Don’t have the time to tell. #
[Content Warning: institutionalization, medication, mention of suicide]
(untitled) Anonymous
[Content Warning: ableism, dehumanization]
Charactering Sarah Cavar I suppose you could say we have the same affect. The same taking-things-tooseriously expression and the same blunt, matter-of-fact voice. The same automatic and eye-scrunching reaction to a benign noise like whistling. The same persistence, the same ritualistic obedience to routine, even at the expense of convenience or others' patience. The same exhausting gullibility that becomes a joke and an annoyance. The same fixation on topics of no interest to others, the same information-vomiting that glazes eyes and tunes-out ears. I once watched The Big Bang Theory as part of some grand, comforting ritual. Twelve-year-old Sarah sat poised in front of the television, legs stretched outward on the sofa, sandwich and chips in their lap. My mother watched intently as well, from the recliner, laughing in tones that gave me a headache. The jokes would arise, tired and overused. A normal person would ask a question. The Sheldon would reply in some long, convoluted way. Laugh track. Laugh track. A laugh track my mother mirrored; one I hesitantly mirrored as well. Sheldon's friends mess with him. They set up some practical joke to do so, laughing vicariously from their positions of comfort as Sheldon blunders toward the twenty-minute episode's climax. The credits run when it is over, the screen switches. We've wrung out our comic relief today, the channel says. Try again later. I see behind my eyelids as I fall asleep memories of my own Sheldonness. I see it in my six formative years of false-friendship, of being discarded when the cost of keeping around an oblivious pest outweighed the benefit of on-demand comic relief. My interest in Sheldon, that trope of a man who seemed a representation of myself, grew into, dare I say, a special interest. My internet history was filled with fanfiction, analyses, and Wiki entries on him. I would produce made-up scenes of his childhood that bore disturbing parallels to my own. I am no genius. I'm no scientist. But Sheldon is a fractured mirror through which I view myself; he's a false parallel used by others to make sense of me. As my parents grew to enjoy The Big Bang Theory, I found myself pulling away. I felt the urge to distance myself as they replied to my neuroses, "Okay, Sheldon!" There was no laugh track when they did that, although I felt the mocking, canned laughter in
my mind. A reminder of what and who I am. Some days I reply, "Sheldon is a cruel caricature." I am told, "But he's funny!" And I know what that means for me. If I am a Sheldon, then I must be a funny unperson, a walking trope, an individual existing only to be mocked for their strangeness. I am Sheldon when I speak words no one wants to hear until my voice is sore. I am Sheldon when my posture is strange, when I look unhuman in my mannerisms. It means I am simultaneously the immature child who covers their ears at the slightest noise and whose routine must not be disrupted, and the hypermature adult with excessively complicated and uninteresting fixations. Moreover, I become Sheldon when others' reactions to me are colored by the assumption that I must be comic relief: I must have no theory of mind, no depth, no substance beyond quirks and irrelevant intellectual interests. I move through life with an out-of-placeness anchored by rules, rituals, and the joyful acquisition of knowledge. As I move through life I wait for an audience's laughter, like a leash round my neck, to usher me forward. #
[Content Warning: ableism]
(untitled 2) Anonymous
The end, for now. Thank you for reading with us. Keep on listening. Be on the lookout for “What’s Your Story” events; you can find it on Facebook and you can email Sarah at cavar22s@mtholyoke.edu with questions, comments, and ideas. If you would like a paper copy of this zine, I ask that you donate one dollar (or more!) to at least one of the following organizations:
Not Dead Yet notdeadyet.org/ Rest For Resistance (QTPoC Mental Health) https://www.restforresistance.com/ The Icarus Project http://theicarusproject.net/ National Black Disability Coalition http://www.blackdisability.org/ Autism Womens’ Network https://autismwomensnetwork.org/ National Council on Independent Living http://www.ncil.org/ Autistic Self-Advocacy Network http://autisticadvocacy.org/ Disabled In Action http://www.disabledinaction.org/
You can email proof of your donation to cavar22s@mtholyoke.edu to receive your paper zine.