I have a need to avoid thinking the worst of other people.

My mental health often hinges on being able to conceptualize the thoughts of others in a charitable way. To focus on what’s good about others– and how they mean well– and what we have in common– and what we must all cooperate to achieve, instead of splintering apart and fighting amongst ourselves.

I have an emotional need to keep this mindset, even when it is such a goddamn strain it basically feels like trying to keep myself in denial.

There was a post going around a while ago, saying something like “we’ve got to start respecting pregnancy as a disability,” and it made me just sit there blinking for a while, because, yes, the struggle is similar and we’re all in this together, but… what the hell world do you live in where being pregnant does not already get you treated a million times better than being disabled?

Whenever I have pregnant coworkers it always feels like a slap in the face, how readily everyone accepts that they now have limitations on what they can do, and that this is a good and natural thing that’s caused by them bringing new life into the world, and we should all basically thank them for it while we pick up all the slack of them getting less work done.

And yes, of course the job of picking up that slack goes to me, running all over the pharmacy doing everyone else’s work, with my mostly numb, mostly immobile right leg getting more numb and less mobile all night, because my limitations on what I can do aren’t ones that I get to have.

Mine aren’t normal and natural and they’re not bringing new life into the world, and so I should be just…. choosing not to have those problems, I guess. (I’m fairly sure at least one coworker– the one currently pregnant, for whatever it’s worth– actually thinks this, because she’s given me “advice” on how to “cure” the problem, and so in her eyes the fact that I still have the problem means I’ve chosen not to take her advice and so it’s really all my fault, you know.)

It’s bizarre. You can’t even really argue self-interest, some sort of practical reasoning about how the Normal and Natural disability of being pregnant is okay because it’ll eventually be over and no longer inconveniencing us– because we all know perfectly well that when it ends in childbirth we’re going to go from having a pregnant coworker to having a coworker with a child. If work was ever her first priority, it sure won’t be ever again. She has something more important now, more fulfilling. Work is now a means to the end of keeping the child alive and happy. And this is a thing to be celebrated! Quite rightly! But in a way that none of them would ever celebrate me using work as a means to the end of keeping my godawful physical health in a state of basic stability.

So it has nothing to do with how much it’ll affect the convenience of their own lives. It has nothing to do with anything except their idea of what’s familiar, what’s normal.

But I doubt they are even thinking that far. Especially about me. Most people seem to just simply… lose all awareness that my leg problem even exists, the moment I am not actively standing in front of them telling them about it.

I mean, okay, it’s not like I’m in pain. I’m grimacing like I’m in pain (not noticed, under my mask that I’m the only one still wearing), but it’s a grimace of concentration, because moving a foot and calf that I 1. can’t feel and 2. can only move via the uppermost muscles in the thigh and hip is a recipe for tripping and falling.

To reduce the risk of falls even a little, I have to be constantly, exhaustingly vigilant, every moment of every hour, aware of the exact position and motion of my foot and every other object in its vicinity. And given the lack of sensation and precise motion, that usually means keeping it in sight.

Means keeping constant visual tabs on things like the trajectory and speed of every object on a potential collision course with my foot, the probable texture and friction coefficient of every surface I’m about to step on, based solely on its appearance – and of course, even if I do all this perfectly, any other part of me could bump up against something that throws my whole body off balance while my eyes are focused on that one godforsaken foot.

And the worst part? like, literally, the thing I worry the most about, through this entire constant damn struggle not to fall? is that when I do fall down or run into something, people always notice.

More than they ever noticed me being in danger of falling– my increasingly staggery limp– my active requests for their help– my thirty-fifth reminder to them in the last twenty-eight days that I do in fact have a neural problem in my leg and it does in fact affect my ability to get around. Oh, all of this just passes right through their heads with zero impression left. But the moment my vigilance fails for half a nanosecond and I actually take a spill? I am the goddamn center of attention.

And then– this, again, being my most focal dread– people always say the same few things.

And I don’t claim to believe that these vocalizations have any thought put into them whatsoever, but even so, they are some of the most infuriating things to ever come out of human mouths.

The most common is:

“Careful!”

….Rrrrgh.

…Like I said. Sometimes maintaining a charitable mindset is a damn struggle.

And, of course, I’m sure that being pregnant also gets its own share of specifically infuriating things people do and say. I’m sure that every one of my coworkers, of any background, in whatever life situation they’re in, has to deal with their own custom assortment of ass-backward nonsense from a dozen different people every day who don’t understand.

It’s just hard to keep that in mind sometimes.

As hard as it is for any of the other minds around here to keep me in them for more than a few seconds, I suppose.

We’re all in different worlds, somehow or other.