Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Internalized Ableism

I once again find myself with too much time between posts.  I hope that sometime soon, I am able to write more consistently.

We recently took our children to the movie theater on opening day of a cartoon.  Seeing as it was a Friday, most children were still in school and it was much more manageable for us.  I have come to realize since my diagnosis that I simply cannot tolerate movie theaters on the weekend.  It's just not worth the cost to me in recovery time.

There were only a handful of other people there when we arrived.  We try our best to time our arrival in the theater for when the previews are over, but this time there were still a few minutes left.  I was sure to bring my headphones with me and had them on when the movie started.  We quickly realized, however, that the noise was intolerable for one of my children, so I gave them my headphones.  The noise was completely overwhelming.  Even my husband, who isn't nearly as sensitive to noise as I am, remarked how loud it was.  I tried to plug my ears, but it's just not sustainable over a ninety minute movie.  I was near tears and did not know what to do.

At this point, I got up and went out to the lobby where several employees were.  I started to explain to the first employee what happened, that I'm autistic and don't tolerate noise, but I believe she was new and didn't know what to do as another employee came over to ask what was going on.  I asked again if the movie could be turned down, and it was done immediately and politely.  I went back in and was able to tolerate the rest of the film- although it was still way too loud for me without my headphones.

Later that day, I was thinking to myself how it was just so nice and gracious of the employees to treat me so respectfully and kindly.  I had convinced myself that I would email the manager of the theater to share my gratitude over my treatment there.  I even toyed with the idea of posting it on their Facebook page, but I quickly dismissed that because I didn't want it to turn into inspiration porn and be misconstrued.  I'm not often on the computer- hence my lack of posting- so I didn't get to the email right away.

The more I thought about it, the angrier I got at myself.  Why was I feeling so much gratitude for this theater that accommodated me? I paid the same amount of money for my ticket as everyone else- aren't I entitled to enjoy my experience just as much as anyone else, within reason? I quickly realized that these thoughts were a manifestation of my own internalized ableism.  It's rather insidious, internalized ableism.  It sneaks up out of nowhere sometimes, ridiculing me for not being able to do "simple" tasks.  For not "having it together" enough.  I had thought I had it more under control, but this theater experience showed me that I still have a lot of work to do in this regard.  I've been conditioned my whole life to set unrealistic expectations for myself and that will take time and hard work to undo.  For me at least, this is important work, because I don't want my children to grow up with this internal dialogue.  I frequently explain to them what's going on if I'm struggling- we take a lot of brain breaks in this house- and it feels good to be able to model that for them in a positive way.

My friend Ally wrote of her similar experience here (CW for strong language) and it was actually her post that really made sense to me and brought on that "aha" moment of clarity.  It feels to me that awareness is the first step in combating these unsettling habits from the past.  It's incredibly important to me to model healthy behaviors and relationships for my kids, so this one is definitely a work in progress for me.