I think everybody can agree with me when I say lockdown has been hard. Not the kind of “hard” you’d say when complaining about the difficulty of something when really you just can’t be bothered and not the kind of “hard” you’d use as an excuse to avoid doing something you didn’t want to do. This is the kind of hard that has been a constant for over 3 months. The kind of hard that has challenged you every moment of the lockdown. It’s made you question yourself, your friendships, maybe even your relationship. It’s made you question your own creativity and your productivity. We set our expectations so high for how we want to spend our time in solitude, to kick ourselves when we can’t find the motivation to do what we want.

Today is May 14th 2020; it’s my 28th birthday.

They call this area the “18th Street Bridge”.

On August 27, 2017, my husband (my boyfriend at the time) was rear-ended by a drunk driver. It wasn’t even 7 pm yet. A man driving an SUV hit the back end of Dale’s Prius C, Spaceboy, at full force, crushing the entire hatch area of his car into the backseat area. Dale walked away with a minor concussion and a couple of scrapes, by some miracle.

Childhood is the best period a person can have in their lifetime. No matter if it's associated with a lot of pain, abuse, or heartbreaks, or is filled with joy and laughter, childhood memories are nonetheless very sweet and dear to us.

I had the opportunity to learn about and engage with the philosophy of disability studies this Fall, 2017 semester. I came to understand the models of disability and how they apply to the functions of an ableist society. Throughout my studies, I was interested in the functions of invisible disabilities, i.e. a disability that cannot be physically perceived on first glance. I wanted to understand how those who cannot be physically identified with the disabled community interact with a world that perceives them as “one of the able-bodied crowd.” Because of social perceptions of disability, my goal was to capture how individuals who dwell in the “gray area” of disability identity take part in the two communities.