On shifting feelings of disability and men that need to back the fuck up??
can you please just stop touching my arm, thank you.
This will start as so many good stories do — in the Costco parking lot.
It’s Saturday morning and I’m rolling my cart of towering goods back to my car (a crockpot for the food I don’t make? lanterns for the balcony I rarely hang out on?). This is a balancing act that I know well: bags dangling from every joint, crease, and handle, my entire body weight leaning into the cart to keep everything in place. It doesn’t look pretty, I’m sure, but it’s efficient.
I see him approaching my cart. He is a bit older than me, tan and in gym shorts, walking in my direction from a few cars down. I am immediately very conscious that I am not wearing my bionic hand this morning. Although I know this means I am just as capable, I understand that without it — the narrative shifts.
I focus on demonstrating my competence: popping open my trunk with my right hand, steadying the cart with my foot, tossing bags into the trunk, and attempting to wrangle the long boxes of new outdoor furniture from the bottom of the cart. I really don‘t need your help, see?
It’s a familiar dance between a stranger and myself, this back and forth between what they see and what I know.
Except, of course, now that I’m aware he’s here, everything goes to shit. I fail to stabilize the cart, and it rolls back just enough for me to fumble the corner of the box.
“Hey! Looks like you could use some help with that,” he says, lunging down to grab the long boxes.
“I’ve seen you here before,” he says between heavy breaths, lugging boxes from cart to trunk.
“Yeah,” I reply, “I live close by and come to this Costco for gas most weekends.”
“I had a friend from high school who was in a terrible accident, lost both of his legs,” he continues. “He was in the hospital for a while, but now it’s like he’s completely turned his life around; like he’s better off without them. Now whenever I see pictures of him he’s climbing some crazy mountain or speaking at events about his story. If he can do it, it really makes me think I have no excuses.”
All of the big boxes are now resting in my trunk, and he begins loading the back with smaller items, bag by bag. He looks earnest, well-meaning, even moved as he reflects on what he imagines his friend’s new life is like—and perhaps what he guesses mine might be. I pick up a bag with my elbow, lugging it into the back.
“You must be so strong.” He says. This is meant to be a compliment. You should take it as a compliment. “Can I ask what happened?” He looks at me, motioning to my arm, over the cart that I have now stepped away from.
I imagine his question comes from a genuine curiosity. And in another time and place, I might be up for standing there in the parking lot, encouraging his questions, and unpacking the whole tangled bundle with him. But here and now? His emotions are a stark mismatch to the reality that this is a very mundane day for me. Existing without part of my left arm is just another Saturday morning.
And truthfully? I have been angry. So angry that I owe a story, an explanation to everyone, and that I get swept up in it myself — too often playing along.
Instead, I say no. A word so foreign that I want to chase after it, take it back the second it leaves my mouth. He looks hurt, and I feel awful. An opportunity to teach someone about disability, to normalize it, to combat his misguided beliefs—and I didn’t because I’m angry?
He didn’t do anything awful. He was helping, and frankly, his help was kind and useful. He was much better at strategically loading up my trunk than I was. How is he supposed to know I’ve been so upset, so fed up with myself and other people’s pushy narratives?
I am a part of the problem, I think as I drive home.
I’m standing in a conference space while people are moving around me. A crowd of mostly men, mostly over 40, mostly non-disabled (or at least that’s my assumption from first glance) garbed in collared shirts and nice pants, drinks in hand.
I'm here to talk about accessibility and the advanced technology that exists for disabled folks—all things I care deeply about and enjoy discussing. Today I’m wearing my bionic hand. It balances my weight and sometimes can feel like armor in these spaces.
I’m beginning to understand what’s at play here. My bionic hand, whether I like it or not, broadcasts a message to everyone: I’m okay! I’ve overcome my disability. I now have two hands, Just like you- see!
I often feel myself folding up, conforming to fit their disability narrative. An inspiration, was it? I incorporate that woman, the inspiration, into myself.
“So, you’re the hand model?” someone approaches me. I brush the question off, introducing myself professionally.
He begins asking questions: “What happened? How long have you worn it? Do you sleep with it on? Shower?” He’s now grabbing the chrome shell of my arm, his hand inspecting up to the wrist. The pads of his fingers make little tap-tap-taps as he scans the hollow shell.
A familiar feeling rises in my chest. “I can imagine it must be hard?” He says in between questions.
“No... yeah... I mean yes, sometimes,” I fumble, trying to articulate—trying to remain professional and kind, but also represent myself and my community accurately. A brief moment while I hold his attention to make him more aware that, for me, it hasn’t been hard physically, but socially—in part because of the very feelings he’s evoking right now.
But he’s still touching my arm. Standing too close, always too close. His eyes make their way to my elbow, where my skin protrudes to keep the weight of the device on. He pokes curiously, touching my exposed skin. It causes no pain, but I become suddenly very aware of how visible I am here. As if every gaze in this room sends out little needles in my direction, pricking painlessly again and again —my skin, my arm, my body.
My chest is in a knot, and I know I’m doing it wrong. I’ve already failed. My face, easily readable now. I want to be composed —Fuck! Smile or laugh, because it feels like the only strategy I have. But no, every moment here, slowly shrinking me.
Sometimes I think these events —that occur for women or people with disabilities— are unbelievable. But more often than not, I write these thinking they are so deeply cliché and common that if I saw them in a movie, it would be boring.
What is so heavy? For me, it is no one event. There has been no single terrible thing to pinpoint. Just the continued invasion of space. Objectification, and the resulting self-doubt fired into the kiln of time. Baked over itself, again and again. It’s the saying yes and agreeing definitely too many times, when I really want to say, step back and, you know that’s still my body, right? and please don’t touch me. Because I don’t want to be angry. Because I don’t want to offend the wrong person.
And because I’m a young woman, and I’m not oblivious. I understand what this often also comes with. I know that some of these feelings might not arise in a young man – or that they might not feel so free to touch him.
Some weeks I go to the climbing gym. Maneuvering a large box from cart to car feels like nothing here. I don’t wear a prosthesis. I lace up my climbing shoes with one hand, adjust my harness, tie in. I’m not particularly good, but I’ve got the basics down and climb alongside other adaptive folks – each with different access needs and methods, all sending it up the wall in different ways.
Here, disability is community.
Here, people’s stares and questions and suggestions don’t shrink me.
Here, questions come from curiosity, and power is derived from a collective figuring it out.
Here, “You are so strong” is echoed often, but it feels good. It feels real. I know my strength, and so do they. And we understand it’s not just because I got up in the morning and went to Costco.
Disability, for me, is a living thing.
It looks and feels different depending on the spaces I am in. It is layered, shifting. I see my experience with disability flicker and blink—a light that reflects and bends. Sometimes it’s on me, constricting and conforming; other times, it’s a flare—guiding and connecting, a signal of understanding. It’s not fixed to any one place, not confined, not something embedded within me. It exists in the spaces between me and others.
It is in the conference space, between me and men that stand too close. My disability is sharp, glaring. It is layered. It becomes a tightening, churning, sexualizing knot —yanked again and again by each invasive or suggestive question. By each tap or touch.
And then, it shifts. At the climbing gym, it’s different. Disability — a source of pride, a shared strength and awareness. A point of connection, an unclenching of jaw and teeth, a sigh of relief, and an energizing we’re going to figure this one out together between the other climbers and I.
I am so scared to write things like this.
One, because this is not just a post about being disabled, but is also a post about existing as a young woman in male-dominated spaces. Because I am sure every woman reading has felt like a fraction of themselves or worse; it is so unbelievably common and predictable that it almost goes without saying. And two, because I know I get in my own way too —often biting my tongue in fear of saying the wrong thing, or upsetting the wrong people.
But I also am actively quieting the fear of ‘saying it wrong’ or waiting until I find the ‘perfect words.’ I hope - in this place, there is no wrong. Even when I have the temerity to get angry, and even when I am living up to my biggest shame of contributing to the problem (as I am sure to sometimes do).
In this practice, this place of writing, I hope there is no wrong.
Laughing the most about you buying a crockpot❤️
Love your writing Annika !