Stop. Just Fucking Stop. by Kristen McConville

A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: Stop. Just Fucking Stop. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.

​I’m tired of all the prayers and the apologies
People who care tell me I need to stop
apologizing, but for once—-I am Not The One
Apologizing. Not apologizing for my existence, as
one of my close friends always tells me.
Stop apologizing for existing. But, how can I stop
when everyone seems to want to tell me that they are sorry for me?
I don’t want your prayers or your ‘fake apologies’, because
“the world doesn’t end, it just feels like it does.”
I don’t know who I’m supposed to be when everyone
keeps using their teacher pointer-finger to tell me that
something is wrong with my body.
My entire life, my own father asked me what was wrong with me,
but not because he cared. I stopped having an answer to give people
whenever they asked me this. When will people stop pointing their finger
At Me? I’m not a circus attraction, I’m a human being.
You’re sorry that this ‘happened’ to me? If someone else tells me this,
I will fucking flee! I’m tired of the fake sympathy and the fake apologies.
I’m tired of the unrealistic optimism—the unrealistic words that “maybe you will outgrow it.
Sometimes if you are diagnosed when you are younger,
you will outgrow it by the time you are old.” Just stop.
Just fucking stop. Just stop with the stares, the prayers, and the apologies.
I’ve expected the mourning of my own body, so why can’t you?
Why do you feel the need to heal me? I don’t want to be healed
and I didn’t ask for it. "But, does the world really end?
They say it just feels like it does. But, would I actually rather be me?"
Who is this version of me that everyone else sees? Who is she?

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Quotations in italics taken from the song, ​"I'd Rather Be Me', from the Mean Girls Musical.