Are Disabled People Allowed To Dream?

There is nothing I have ever wanted more than to have control over my own life. The only thing I have ever wanted is stability and certainty. To be able to have my needs as a disabled person met and all of my medications. It is downright exhausting to always be at the mercy of other people and other agencies. People in these agencies, whether it is allowed, have a tendency to let whatever authority they have go to their heads. I have encountered so many workers at federally funded agencies that have had no issue playing God with someone’s life. I live my life with medically Diagnosed Complex PTSD, Bipolar Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Seasonal Affective Disorder and Asthma from the stress. Being Trans has only magnified the direness of my situation because it has removed my humanity in other’s eyes. The others that work at federally funded agencies meant to help disabled people like me but rather have denied my needs and accommodations for these disabilities simply because they do not like that I am Trans. Being Trans and Indigenous has made me completely disposable. Throughout my life, I have searched for love and a partner that could save me from my situation. I have naively lent my body and heart to men who at a time fulfilled some fairytale fantasy that I could potentially be so happy with someone, that all of my disabilities and struggles go away. I don’t want a fancy car or a mansion, I just want to have control over my own life and to have all my needs met.

As a disabled person you are allowed to make $16,000 a year or less in order to keep your medicaid. You are not allowed to have more than a $500 savings in the bank in case of an emergency. There are able accounts but I have nothing to put in one. When you have developed symptoms before you were old enough to work, you will not have a sufficient number of work credits to get regular disability. When you have a mental health disability, you have a non-visible disability. The Americans with Disability Act protects non-visible disabilities from discrimination. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 also protects people with disabilities from discrimination. However, that does not mean that people at these federally funded agencies will always acknowledge your non-visible disabilities. The first 11 years, I was docile and just took the abuse. In 2020 I began to stand up for myself and my rights. There has been a movement to change the name of PTSD from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to Post Traumatic Stress Injury. You see, PTSD is not genetic. You can pass down historical trauma in cells but it is not genetic. PTSD is a non-visible injury you acquire from one ore more traumatic events. PTSD rewires the brain and it becomes a physical injury that other people can not see. Trauma survivors do not choose to be traumatized. I never chose trauma. Most of the people who caused my trauma got to move on with their lives. They got to graduate with our class, they got to get married, have a family and go to college. The people that traumatized me managed to have careers with no struggles. I have experienced all of the consequences of receiving the trauma. I can not work a 9 - 5 job and have to avoid people most of the time. Ironically, one of these people works for Snap. I had to drop out of high school because students tried to murder me and the school faculty was always encouraging them to mistreat me. I got it from every which end. I didn’t get to graduate with my class and because of the trauma, I have only been able to complete two semesters in college. Being in a school setting is very triggering for me. I was only able to work at one 9 - 5 job in 2005. I was a florist and the customers used to love the funeral flower arrangements I made on my free time. We were allowed to create our own designs to express ourselves on our free time. When you have PTSD, you become obsessed with death - especially me because I had so many brushes with trauma and death since I was an adolescent. I made the kind of flower arrangements that I would want to see at my own funeral. From the age of15 until I was nearly 22, I was very addicted drugs and alcohol. I worked at a time when I was using narcotics and alcohol to cope in my every day life. I wasn’t sober a day in my life. There were days I would stay awake for two days at a time. Sometimes I couldn’t sleep and had a bottle of whiskey at all times. It was used to help me numb my mind enough to fall asleep. I scared my friends/family so many times because I used to try to jump out of moving cars, cut myself with broken cds, burn my thighs with cigarettes and so much more. I carried all of this pain and could never tell anyone what I had been through. Only my Mother, the principle who let me drop out and the people who harmed me knew what I had been through until I started speaking out in 2013.

I have been sober for over 15 years but these employees at these federally funded agencies have no idea how much work I have done to try to turn my life around. They don’t see a recovering addict. They only see my Mental Health disabilities when it’s convenient enough to stigmatize them and treat me like I’m crazy. It is a common occurrence with people who live with Mental Health Disabilities, not only in acquiring financial assistance or healthcare coverage but in receiving healthcare. Often times, people with Mental Health disabilities are medicated to the point of being too zombified to complain. We are often medicated to the point that we have a low Labido and don’t have a range of emotions. I remember at some point, I was receiving healthcare from a medical clinic for low income patients that was so over capacity, none of the doctors I spoke to even remembered my story. I had to tell my story from the beginning at every visit. I am happy that clinics for low income pantients exist but these people had overmedicated me and kept me on a medication that I should have never been on. In 2007, I had hit rock bottom and found myself in the Psych Ward for suicide watch and detox. The head psychiatrist was out of town and he left a resident doctor overseeing the psychiatric unit. This horrible stroke of luck is how I ended up on a medication used to treat people with Schizo Affective Disorder, I was never supposed to be on that medication because I am not Schizo Affective. They basically allowed a doctor in practice to gain experience from treating us. Although, being scared straight put me on the right path to wanting sobriety more than ever. People at federally funded agencies meant to help disabled people also don’t see someone that was once on the wrong medication for 9 months. They don’t see that my family said they had to mourn for me during that time because I was a living zombie. They don’t see that when I got a second opinion, the new doctor took me off of that medication immediately and said I should have never been on that medication to begin with. I was officially diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder in 2007. I had been in and out of the hospital for suicide attempts and one overdose. By the time I was admitted into the ER in 2007, my medical history was enough for them to keep me in the Psych Ward to get diagnosed. The new medication that I was eventually put on in 2008 had helped lower my anxiety, fixed my racing thoughts, lowered my suicidal ideation, I learned to rationalize and it kept my mania under control so that my depression wouldn’t get out of hand. It only fixed one of my problems. My biggest struggle has always been my PTSD. In 2013, a problem in my life sent me over the edge and I ended up anorexic. Everything I had been through was no longer allowed to be kept in a box in the back of my mind. I had lost so much weight in a matter of a month, that my doctor screened me for cancer. Luckily it wasn’t cancer. It was a combination of irritable bowel syndrome and ptsd. I became terrified of food but also hardly eating was the only real control I had over my life. In 2016, my diagnosis was upgraded to Complex PTSD - which is a form of PTSD that involves a patient who has had so many traumatic experiences/situations - you can’t exactly pinpoint which was the one to permanently traumatize a person. I have learned to manage my ptsd over the years, to the point that I have learned to advocate for myself and the Indigenous, Disabled, Trans and Two Spirit communities I come from. I’ve learned to sit at tables professionally and keep my composure. Granted, how I’m feeling can change from day to day but I have been able to do these things at times - it has even surprised me.

As an Artist, most art grants are either meant for White Artists in the White dominated Art Scenes or Native Artists who fit within the spectrum of the Native stereotypes. I am an experimental Artist that has been painting to cope with trauma since I was a child. When I really began to heal, it was when I first began to make sound art. This sound art was meant to give PTSD a sound, so others would understand what PTSD felt like just by listening. My earliest music was really shocking for people to hear at first. People didn’t know what to make of it. One of my earliest tracks was a song called “ Phobia “ and the lyrics were just me repeating the horrible things people would tell me online. I have been trying to transform the traumatic things that have happened to me to help my communities. When people get to hear these lyrics, they can understand the kind of treatment that younger Trans people could potentially avoid. Having honest discussions gives society a chance to create preventive care and safety for these communities. My lifelong mission has been to never let anyone experience the kind of trauma that some of us adults have. I want people to see that we are human beings with people that love us. I have at many points in my life felt that the only times that I am treated well is if my Mom is present. If she is present in a doctor’s visit, during an interview to receive disability assistance, even getting groceries. I have had a stalker the last year and a half. I had to change my phone number and even delete my Facebook profile to maintain my own safety. Doing that has left me with little opportunities to not only sustain myself but many work contacts have had trouble getting a hold of me. I needed art grants more than ever this year and all the ones I had applied for have to this day been denied. I applied for Snap and was greatly mistreated, as well as denied. The extra sting is having seen White People bragging about times they were on food stamps when they didn’t need them. Yet here I am, a Disabled Indigenous Trans person that isn’t receiving disability, wasn’t able to find work and not receiving any art grants being denied for food stamps. I often wonder, where is the space for people like me. Because we do not carry ourselves the way you do, is our work not valid? I am either too Native for some grants or not Native enough for others. I am not receiving Disability because of the way I have been verbally abused, verbally harassed, discriminated against over my disabilities and discriminated against over me being Trans by Social Security. Because I am Trans, SSA have used it as an excuse to discriminate against me over my medically diagnosed disabilities and also not meeting my ADA accommodations that I have asked for. When I received SSI for all of two months, the employees gave me a hard time because I’m a gig worker. I’m an Artist, Writer, Musician and Journalist. As a gig worker, you can make $1,000 in one month and make nothing else for four months. I was compliant and transparent. They just didn’t like me. After all the complaints and supervisors/managers I spoke to, there was no such change made to how I was treated. I have been in a cycle of abuse with SSA since 2009. After those two months, I had to ask to stop receiving payments because the verbal abuse and harassment I was experiencing was too detrimental for my health. I don’t want to be on SSI, every time I am in their care, they set me back all over again. They break me down, dehumanize me and make me feel so small. I am getting too old and too tired to constantly be rebuilding myself over and over again. I was under the assumption that Social Workers were meant to help disabled people, not harm us further.

Disabled people have dreams too. I have dreams. Since I was a child, I have wanted to become a published Author. I want to see my books on bookshelves in a store and in libraries some day. That just hasn’t happened yet. The line of work I do was completely unplanned but feels a whole lot like destiny. The work I have done to cope with my disabilities became work that others have resonated with. I never expected to be doing panels, to be writing or making music with people occasionally thanking me for vocalizing what they could not articulate into words. I never met a disabled person that didn’t have a dream. Does anyone ever even ask us if we have dreams? Instead I was punished for doing gig work because I wanted to feel like I was doing something for myself. Because gig work is all I’m capable of doing as a disabled person. We must also recognize that the most important thing for disabled people to worry about is taking care of their health and doing what we have to do to stay in good health in our own unique situations with our own unique disabilities. We must let go of the idea of having to constantly produce if we are unable to. The ADA is Ancient Text from an old society. It merely covers what we need as disabled people. There is also no Marriage Equality until disabled people can marry without risking losing their disability or other financial assistance. It is ableist to make disabled people work when they can’t but for some of us who can and want to make some achievements in our lives, it shouldn’t be held against us. We also shouldn’t be treated like just because we are disabled that we can not experience happiness sometimes and it be held against us for the times we have done what we can to experience some kind of happiness. We should not be treated like just because we are disabled that we are not allowed to aspire to be so much more.

by Marcy Angeles: Artist, Writer, Musician, Journalist & Public Speaker