Trigger Warning - Suicide
If you’re someone who cares about suicide prevention but you aren’t masking in shared public spaces, I want you to think about whether your behaviour is aligned with your values.
Seeing everyone readily embrace eugenicist policies over the last 5 years has, as previously discussed, been completely and utterly devastating as a high risk disabled person. For 5 years people like me have been shut out of public spaces and are consistently receiving the message that our lives do not matter. How do you think our mental health is doing? Remember how fed up some of you were after being denied access to public spaces for 3 months? How do you think we’re doing after half a decade? There have been so many times over the last 5 years where I simply did not want to be here anymore.
I know you aren’t entirely unaware of the wave of long-term health conditions that Covid is bringing on. I wonder if you’ve given any thought to what chronic illness does to a person’s mental health? Being sick and in pain every day of your life, losing your job, your financial stability, your independence, your relationships, every ambition you had for your life. How do you think a person’s mental state is when they live with this day in day out, knowing that neither the government nor the general public care - and not only do they not care, they’ll call you lazy, a faker, a malingerer. We’ve all seen how Long Covid is being pathologised and stigmatised, just like M.E and many other chronic illnesses before it. Did you know that a significant number of Long Covid patients go on to receive an M.E diagnosis? Did you also know that M.E patients are six times more likely to die from suicide than the general public?
Have you ever stopped to consider that high risk disabled people just want to “live their lives”, as you all like to tell us is your right? Why do you get to live yours but we don’t? Why must your right to live your life come at the cost of ours? Why don’t we deserve the same rights and access as you?
I wonder if you’ve ever stopped to think about how utterly, soul-crushingly exhausted we all are. How we would would love to be spending our time thinking and talking about literally anything else - how heartsick we are at the fact that all of our time, resources and energy is going into simply surviving. We have so much to offer the world - you like to remind us of that when we express suicidal thoughts - but you refuse to do anything that might help us live a life beyond simply shielding and staying alive.
Do we not deserve joy? Do we not deserve the space and time to play and create, like the rest of you? Is this how life is for us now - just pure survival?
“Stay” you tell us, but then continue to make public spaces unsafe and inaccessible to us.
“Reach out if you’re struggling” you tell us, but then continue to allow the spread of a virus that is killing and disabling people.
“You are needed” you tell us, whilst you make it very clear that our lives are worth less than yours.
If you care about suicide prevention, think about your high risk disabled friends. Think about the high risk disabled people you don’t know and will never meet. Think about yourself, your kids, your community, and mask the f*ck up.
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