I always feel complicated about listing out my ailments and debilities in an attempt to appear more legible in my disability to an audience. There isn’t anything more personal and intimate in my life than the chaotic conditions of my own body. Why do you need to know? Why does anyone need to know this? What is the process involved in a disabled theorist trying to explain across a vast experiential divide that they have special knowledge of the body’s incapacities— due to their inability to walk, to see, to vocalize, to lift their head, to coexist with bright light, to eat most foods, to go long periods without specialized medication, etc.— and by this experience be recognized as a ‘real’ disabled person in liberal discourse, allowed to proceed as expert. Expert in a subject most people stop engaging with after the question of ‘real’ disability has been answered to their comfort and satisfaction.
However, the processes of my body are and continue to be major events in my life. Major events that affect my political analysis and which struggles I prioritize just as surely as my identities as butch lesbian anarchist do. My experience of debilitation, its progression, and how it exists and interacts with social life has been one of the most radicalizing experiences of my life. My work is the work of a disabled theorist and artist and always will be. It is important to me that this is not forgotten nor sidelined. Also, I get tired and demoralized trying to explain it out over and over again in different places. So, here I will endeavor to give a general overview of my health, which will certainly need to be updated as I learn more.
I was born a month early and with multiple disabilities, most of which did not emerge until early adulthood. I had congenital cataracts which needed surgery at a young age to preserve my vision, as well as multiple structural problems with my teeth. I also grew up in stress, neglect, and abuse, and regular hard, high-impact labor was expected from me on a nearly daily basis. I stopped receiving regular dental care and healthcare when I was 16 years old and didn’t start getting either until a decade later: when many problems, especially with my teeth and jaw, became overwhelming and chronic. While I had multiple other ailments and pains that began when I was much younger that I won’t list out here, the TMJ that came in early adulthood was my first truly chronic pain condition. It began in 2019 and has not relented even for a moment since, despite many different attempts at treatment. As the years have progressed, so has the pain, moving out from my jaw, to my neck, to my upper back, and whole spine. Today, most of the joints in my body pop audibly and hurt horribly.
I have been diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder for which I am prescribed immunosuppressants, but I have been unable to take those regularly yet due to collecting several injuries. I was assaulted by cops in 2023: the labrum of my left shoulder was torn as a result and later required surgery to repair. Towards the end of 2024 I was sent to have a physical assessment done for my application for disability assistance. The physician there pushed on my hip joint so roughly that it tore the labrum in my left hip as well. The injury has been debilitating since then, but worsened in September of 2025 so significantly that, at time of writing, I can barely walk and need a wheelchair to leave my house. The medical images that finally confirmed this labral tear also revealed another chronic condition: hip dysplasia. Repairing both hip and labrum will require a specialized surgery that only two surgeons in my current state (MO) will treat, and neither one of them accept my insurance: the only insurance that will let me see my current specialists and still cover my immunosuppressants. I am working on moving out-of-state to somewhere with more resources for my highly vulnerable body, but until then I’ll be having to get around in life with a very damaged hip.
Physicality itself is characterized by pain. Living is pain. Every piece of work I make and share, every word I write or speak, everywhere I go and in everything I do there is overwhelming pain. I sleep and eat incredibly poorly, despite my ongoing efforts to the contrary. When I am not creating, I am usually engaging in extensive pain management with a series of heating and cooling devices, strange configurations of pillows on a bed or couch to support screaming joints that never fully calm. Endurance is a constant struggle. I say this not for sympathy, but because I know how difficult the costs are to see in the end-products that are so much quicker to consume. I am far from the only disabled theorist for whom this is true for, and there are other creatives far more debilitated than I. For more of my thoughts on that dynamic in particular, you might read my essay Butch Ability.