I Took a Walk Today (or The Eugenics is the Point)

CW // assisted suicide, self-harm

So I went out for a walk a little earlier, even posted a photo from that walk on Instagram like it was NBD. It’s therapeutic, right? My physical therapist has wanted me to increase my endurance by walking, right? Except that’s not why I went out for a walk.

As soon as I walked straight past the Dumpster fence instead of making the turn to do laps around the cul-de-sac, I went out to the road maintained by the town and THEN took a right.

I knew that “lap” was too long for me.

Almost a year in physical therapy, and I can’t walk around the block, not even the shorter block. Those trees, those leafless shrubs I photographed — they aren’t on the shorter block.

My original Instagram caption for this photo was: I didn’t know this patch of land existed here. I think it might be part of the creek, but these aren’t prescription sunglasses.

I’d waited for my husband and kid to run to the store so I could take too long of a walk because I can’t get the news story about the woman who “chose” assisted suicide because she can’t get housing assistance out of my head. I could have been her.

I could still be her, in some unknown future where my husband and kid aren’t around to help me. I cried the entire time I was walking. Thinking about how little people care about disabled people like us. How expendable we are.

How even this woman’s story in the news will only be a blip on some people’s radar, an “aww, that’s so sad” before they scroll to see what celebrity nonsense is going on or find a superspreader event to attend maskless.

I kept walking because, as much as it shames me to say, I wanted to collapse. I wanted my cane not to be enough. I wanted weakness to win. I wanted to find out I was too dehydrated for the warm weather. I wanted someone to find me on the side of the road and call for help for me.

I wanted to be hurt ENOUGH that people noticed and cared. I didn’t want to stop living or anything, I just wanted to be too much for my husband to take care of at home, so I’d stay overnight at the hospital for fluids & observation, so he didn’t have to take care of me just once.

I wanted for my loved ones to SEE ME and how I’m at my wit’s end, how little my body is capable of, informed via mass text that I’m not well. And to use that opportunity to tell them that this…