100 x 35

Post #100. A full circle has closed. My youth years are almost gone, and I have barely lived them. What I did live was a complete fail in my attempts to keep up. Whenever I was able to accomplish something, others were already miles ahead. The constant need to catch up, and the frequent need to stop because something inside broke along the way. There was always something on the way. It has obviously kept me consistently behind. Simple. Logic.

I must have been too stupid to have chosen this situation as my worst nightmare. Being economically nonviable at 35 And it's coming true, day after day. It's also true that this is hardly a privilege of mine. Situation is identical for millions of other people.Is that why I have to accept it?

How can someone tell me that, as if this was OK? That I should accept to be treated as inferior? Why is that too easy and common for able bodied healthy people to tell me I should settle for less because I'm disabled? Especially knowing, because of disability, I actually need more to have dignity? If this is a matter of merit, it should actually be the other way around (not that this makes any difference).

These people won't probably know the right answer. But the reason why I need to agree to be considered inferior is to preserve a bit of mental health. That's the only key to reestablish logic, I know! But then, how can I look at myself in the damn mirror and like what I see? How can I look forward to what's coming up in life, if it's just a bit more delay? Everyday I'm asked to reconcile the impossible: self-esteem and inferiority.

In Vassily Grosmann's book "Life and destiny", an old Jewish doctor describes the odd experience to move to the ghetto in 40's Russia. On one hand, being fenced like cattle to the old city made it official that Jews were then considered inferior, third class. In the ghetto, they were deprived of their freedom, and constant rumors suggested their time in the face of the Earth could be over very soon.

But despite an apparently gloomy experience, this old lady doctor would describe it as relieving. Because despite being in bad shape, with little food, and expecting to get killed for no reason, in the ghetto she didn't feel alone. Although life conditions were bad, against all the odds, it actually felt good, to the extent of possible.

My case is exactly the opposite. Being surrounded by able bodied everywhere, in this semi-inclusive settings, although still not economically viable, gives me better objective conditions in life. If I wasn't inside at all, I'd probably be making even less money. And I'd probably suffer even more from being insufficiently productive at the prime time of my life.

But I wouldn't have to deal with being treated as inferior, which could actually have a great effect on my well-being. Again, this doesn't change a thing. What it might do, eventually, is allow me to forgive myself more fully for miserably failing at mission impossible.

Post #99

For quite some time I've thought I had stuff figured out. From a strictly concrete point of view, maybe I do. But there are some structures in my being which still bring old days fragility. Full insertion and inclusion, which was supposed to be my life control dashboard hasn't happen. Consciously I know this is a given. And it has mostly to do with others. My interaction with the outer world.

I'm in the best shape of my life, personally or professionally. However, there's still this fear everything can suddenly collapse, while I lose the little control over my existence I thought I had. It's fairly easy for me to understand the origins of all this. Contrary to the feelings I've been experiencing since my grandmother died, they make sense. At the same time a part of me keeps protesting, feeling ashamed for not being the man I could have been with no disability.

There's an obsession in me that seems connected to this desire to redo the past. To overcome. This isn't necessarily something bad, unless it clearly undermines the foundations I've created to be able to build myself as a person. Some signals from the environment just trigger this irrational emotional response, so strong and overwhelming that all my strength suddenly disappears, and there's just a repeating voice telling me to give up.

Don't want your number. Never actually lost it.

When I write stuff here, despite based on my personal experience, the idea is to distill some sort of general understanding that hopefully applies to more people, and can thus shed some light over situations that happen commonly to others as a somewhat clear consequence of disability matters, and related prejudice.

This means that even if you happen to see yourself here, it usually doesn't really matter to me in particular anymore. My writing is exactly my way of digesting what happens, and move on, for good. So if you're cited anonymously here, you're just an example of which I like to extract some sort of general understanding that hopefully applies to more people and more situations than this specific one you've been part of. And after I do that, I can personally just let go of the situation and forget about it, once I've learned something useful from it. I don't want your number,

If you come across me in a bar, and you start questioning about one of these specific essays, you'd better just bring a clear reference so that I can first of all remember who you are, and what you're talking about, and then discuss the issue, in case I think it's worth it.

In last night particular case, I wasn't even able to remember the first part, and much less which was the damn essay I've written months ago using something you did as an inspiration. The only thing left from you was the clear idea that some people are apparently very accepting and understanding, while in fact they're not.

As time went by, I've learned to distinguish basic types of attitudes towards disability. First one is full blown open prejudice, like the one I've faced when people cancelled dates upon knowing I was disabled, not a minute before. While this one is personally the most unpleasant, it actually gives me the best chance to defend myself, since it's out there, and hopefully will be soon typified as a crime, as racism already is.

The second, in my opinion, is probably the most dangerous one: your type. People that see themselves as tolerant, and even indifferent to disability, and who will try to sell you their version of facts, namely that prejudice and oppression don't really exist outside disabled person's inner reality. These ones are probably as wrong as the first group, but since they are not openly discriminating you in your face, you tend to better tolerate them and their biased views, even giving them some space to lecture you.

But equality is a social struggle, and people like yourself actually provide the coverage needed for type 1 to openly hold on to their prejudice and privilege. Contrary to what you think, you're not really much better than them, but you're certainly much more difficult to fight. Thus the last thing I wanna know is that your excuse for rejecting me was not disability, and even less that this is evidence that prejudice doesn't exist.

It takes work and analyzing to extract truth from experience, but science progress is the proof that despite your inability of doing such a thing, others can and will do it. This is the pack I wanna be part of. And this essay is actually for you.

So this is Christmass, and dreams do come true

Last year, late November, I've written a sort of prophetic essay about social parasites, particulary the ones that were hierarchically above me at work, and who were thus far very effective in sabotaging my life and my career without any visible prejudice to their own.

Yes, they were two morons at a company that generally values intelligence a lot. However, even having lower than average IQ and education to work there, especially as people managers, they really excelled in small politics and lack of character. This has made them go much farther than what one could expect from them.

And since people above them were irresponsible enough to grant these horrible women any kind of power over whole teams, I didn't feel I should have much hope for a happy end of my story there. However, this is something I want to share with others, especially those under any sort of abusive hierarchic superiors.

The system itself was in clear favor of them, which really gave me the impression I'd be done with very soon. But there have been other factors at play I couldn't quite understand back then, but that right now seem quite obvious.

These people, were opportunistic and under-qualified. This clearly put them in a difficult position when compared to whom they were supposed to lead, and that earned substantially less money than them. It's sort of logical to think that the only way for those people to keep their inadequately high position, was to both undermine the ones doing the actual work on their behalf, while they kept busy repeating platitudes and abusing these very people.

For 2 years I was kept in this lousy situation. I was abused, underpaid, and afraid this was the end of my career, and an irreversible damage to my future perspectives in life. But luckily I was wrong. With the right people coming to the larger team leadership, these fake leads were soon uncovered by their incompetence.

And although nobody has apologized to me or compensated me for all the deep shit I've been put through because the organization has failed to control and eliminate these pieces of human garbage, as expected, I've suddenly become a top performer, as soon as they were cleared from my way.

Now I probably have a future that's more compatible with my education levels and skills. But I still intend to do everything I possibly can to avoid something like that happens ever again. This year I've got indeed a lot to celebrate. But I'll make sure not to forget a second of the hell I've been through as a means to help eliminating this sort of abuse from the face of the Earth.

Last chance

Sometimes I just get naked from any activist intentions and I try to act like any other human being. What happens is that activists need to be radical to make their point. This can actually be inconvenient because navigating life often demands lots of incoherent action. And this is exactly the kind of shit an activist can't afford.

In any case, I really do my best to be aware of my two hats. And I try to act more softly when dealing with private matters that don't necessarily make to the cover of a magazine. On the other hand, there's always a limit. And when this is reached, I feel rather obligated to make it public for the sake of my cause.

One of those nights, I've matched with a girl in Happn. She was really fun, very young, and unfortunately very compliant to some sort of primal beauty standard that must be embedded in my jewish DNA. Yes, she's like 10 years younger than me. But although I'm mentioning that to make sure it's taken into account, I don't really think it can be deemed as a valid excuse for everything that happened later on.

She was very eager to meet me after the late night chats we've had. Although tired, she never for a second hesitated about wanting to meet me on that Saturday night. But then, as I always do, I felt I needed to tell her I've had cerebral palsy. I did that only for the sake of being entirely transparent, since I don't really believe it should be that relevant, especially for making the decision to blow me off in the last minute.

But then, that was exactly what happened. When she came across this info about me, she has just decided it was OK to cancel the date in the last minute. She has used her mental state as a excuse to do so. I was angry. I was frustrated. I felt as an activist it was my duty to hold her in contempt for being such a low person.

However, I've also put myself in her shoes, and decided to swallow my pride and my hatred as a means to promote a real positive change. I knew I'd be absolutely excused to just treat her as the lowest possible creature in the world without any trace of guilt. After all, being nasty to someone that has been ridiculously obscene to you is hardly something that will give you bad dreams at night.

Fact is I didn't really want to believe she was nasty. Because minutes before I was totally into her, lost in a great chat about nothing in particular, Seinfeld style. And all of a sudden, she felt ok to be treating me as subhuman because I've told her I have a disability. In this light I've managed to control my anger and give her the benefit of the doubt.

Now I realize this wasn't really about her. I was challenging myself to turn something despicable into another walk in the park. I was obsessed. I really felt that if I could make this person treat me as another person, I would have been able to erase some of the evil thrown on disabled people all over the world, since humanity's inception.

I've failed miserably. After so much time trying to convince her to meet me and end that horror situation she was causing both of us, I just had to give up. She really thought she could treat me like crap, and still have a clean conscience, still being able to consider herself a decent person. Well, unfortunately I have to disagree. But I'll give her yet the last chance to make it right. You see, this essay is going out without her name. So it is public, as much as all my records about being abused at work.

Her name is not here, so no one will be able to tell she did it. Now my pledge is the following: if she really thinks what she did was OK, I think she won't mind me mentioning who she is. Otherwise, she's exactly like my ex-ex manager. Just a lousy person without any special talent abusing people to appear less incompetent and unskilled than she really was. In that case, I don't see any reason why her identity should be protected. Especially by me.

Modern love

Time goes by and things change. Yet of course basic human feelings are still the same as they were 500 BC. But the social structure in which these feelings unfold as well as the technological means by which they are exchanged have definitely changed drastically.

In a world where the vast majority of the rich people already have a smartphone in their pockets, several novel forms of social interaction emerge. Mobile broad band internet connection that enables people to instantly access thousands of high definition photos, and built-in precise geolocation systems are allowing the exponential growth of virtual dating.

Advantages are pretty large. To start with, you're not tied up to your inner social circle in order to find someone you wanna date or something else. This is very convenient, because at a certain age, most of the people around become committed, meaning that choices within a particular social group are very limited. Expanding the target socially can be great for those that either didn't follow society's common life tracks in terms of romantic relationships, but also the ones that have, and for some of several reasons, have left that position later in life. This virtual social field has the potential to give people many additional opportunities to avoid loneliness.  

Furthermore, meeting this is way is also more convenient in terms of time commitment. For those who are shy, there's also the advantage to be able to talk for a while with a person before meeting her, which can help avoiding social anxiety. Since there's no full visibility of the person you're interacting with, it's possible to do it simultaneously with multiple people, thus increasing the chance to find someone that's worth it, whatever this may mean to you.

But not everything is so great in the online dating world. Same information asymmetry about what each person is doing, causes engagement and commitment levels to be really low. What this means is that even if conversation is fun, and one thinks the other person is an interesting candidate, it's common to see them treating each other with much less respect and consideration, compared to someone that's right in front of them.

Probably there's a physiological component to that behavior. Looking someone in the eye when you talk to her definitely gives you a whole different level of understanding of what the person is talking about, but maybe more important, what she's not.

In any case, this is an aspect that really undermines how successful these relationships can ever be. If people will always consider each other so disposable, this makes them more convenient to interact with, since regular social etiquette doesn't seem to apply, and they are suitable for last minute date cancellations or just not returning messages whenever the smallest distraction comes up. But it also means these relationships will always worth very little, and the communication means be considered as a lemon market.

I'm positive about the fact one can define his own conduct to a certain extent,, regardless of his environment. I'mMeaning it's possible to be a decent polite person in the virtual world where there currently no incentives to do so. Thing is, if incentives aren't there, it means most people won't do it. The result is that the likelihood you can find someone that will respect you enough for a relationship to be started in these apps is indeed very low.

So their reputation as being platforms for enabling casual sex encounters is actually a natural outcome of how little incentives people have to behave well and engage in meaningful conversations and relationships based in mutual respect. So for the satisfaction of sexual needs of physically suited people, the apps do work quite well. But if the idea is to turn these virtual meeting points into opportunities to find compatible life companions, or even people you'd like to be around for longer than a week, developers will need to put more thought into interaction quality, rather than the current focus in quantity.

Unintended uncovering good old prejudice

I put people in a tough position. Especially women. In dating apps no one can actually tell I'm disabled just by looking at my pictures. So with a lot of these pictures and a clever profile, I probably get the female attention and interest I would if the disability didn't exist. That actually feels good. I know the kind of attention I normally have from girls in real life, and it's obviously much less. I'm good at talking, I'm smart, so many of them want to date me at some point.

Issue is, I know disability is not something they expect to come across (despite prevalence in population would grant different expectations). So from this newly acquired rapport that has been build with my inner self, I always explain to them I have a disability before the date. It's pointless for me to hide something they will eventually see when we meet. But the timing for that talk is another tricky aspect of the whole experience.

Often times, because I was procrastinating, or simply forgot about the fact I always must explain my disability to others, I'd end up telling them about it very close to the agreed date. I wasn't trying to manipulate the results or their motivation. It was naive forgetfulness or even the inability to know how to introduce the topic in the conversation.

Then I've had a lousy date (that in terms of traditional success criteria was actually pretty good) and this girl has told me I was being deliberately manipulative. Of course I don't care that much about her particular opinion, since she's someone I don't really want to see again ever. But I'm a slave to the statement "what if".

So, because of this unfair feedback I knew wasn't true, I've decided to deliberately test the hypothesis. After that, what I did was to tell the girl really early in the app after-match conversation that I have a disability. And in terms of the conversation itself, this hasn't changed anything that much.

With this strategy in mind, what has surprised me quite a bit was the number of times the girls would schedule a date with me and then decide to blow me off for no particular reason. It's relatively super high, comparing to the previous unconscious one.

This really makes me mad. Maybe I'm wrong, (I'll be glad to be this time) but what seems to happen is that even when these girls say my disability doesn't matter (which is quite different from the regular reality), this variable has a huge influence in their ability to keep their appointment or even the way they decide to break it, disappear and maybe come up with an excuse later on. Or not.

Long story short, they are lying. Not only to me, but probably to their own selves. Because if they refuse to go out on a date with me exactly when they find out I have a disability, the relationship between the two events would be just too obvious. Just as their prejudice they claim not to have. They wouldn't be able to hide it, either from me or themselves.

That puts me in a dilemma here. Because I think in a reasonable world I wouldn't even have to explain my disability all the time. After all, all my pictures are true, I never refuse to talk about the issue when it comes up, and it's not something that should make me be perceived as a worse person.

But I don't really like the shock these girls have when they meet me. It makes me uncomfortable and angry. On the other hand, knowing that if the girls know from the start I'm disabled really makes me have to rearrange my calendar around all these last minute cancellations all the time, I wonder what a hell I'm supposed to do. Any tips?