Be A Good Little Cripple And We'll Give You a Bone

This was a response to a commenter named Skeptyk at Dances With Fat.

Skeptyk said: "As long as you are a cheerful, uncomplaining striver, TABs can pat you on the head and tell you, with unconscious condescension, what an inspiration you are, how great it is that you, even broken, messed-up you, can actually do xxx. If you don’t play along, you are a bad crip, ungrateful."

Yes indeed!

I have both physical and mental challenges. My physical challenges are comparatively pretty minor: sciatica, fibromyalgia, mild hypothyroidism, mild hypertension. I can deal. Even with the degree of urinary incontinence that I "enjoy" ever so much, if these were my only problems, I'd be a pretty happy camper. But then we have my good old pals bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, and OCD. Now these dear old chums put my life on hold for a long time before I finally learned how to wrestle them into some semblance of submission. HOWEVER this does not mean that I am asymptomatic. The depression part of bipolar (I have type II, which tends to be more prone to depression) can still slam me into powerful suicide ideation, and I am not always a "good crazy" being ever so positive and happy-slappy in spite of the fact that I quite literally am fighting the urge to kill myself. I am also not a "good fatty" because even though I am trying to eat more healthy foods, I flat out refuse to eat die-t food. That crap either tastes like cardboard or they add a shit ton of sodium to make it palatable. 

But yeah, like you said, as long as you're a Happy Cripple (in whatever sense) then you get pats on the head from the Perfect People who are secretly feeling smug that they don't have to be so flawed.