Sophie in a Straitjacket

Have you ever felt guilty for just being born? For having a roof over your head? Guilty for having community resources, guilty for having ideas, emotions, ambition?

Due to a mental health disability, I am made to feel like I have no rights. No right to say what my needs are, let alone have any of them met.

I have no support with living in my flat where I am and feel isolated.

Why? Can anyone tell me? Why am I being made to feel like a criminal for just being me and living my life to the best of my ability given the circumstances in which I am in?

I like to be creative, so why am made to feel that I ought to get a proper job or do more work than I already do and am capable of?

Its hard to put your finger on what is actually happening to me and people like me in the world today. It can be summed up though as feeling like you're being placed in a straitjacket. Like we should not have any entitlement to do anything at all, just pushed around and gawped at, tormented even.

Our very existence as people with special needs is being denied, we are being denied the right to be ourselves. Expected to be like some fictitious other that exists in the imaginations of high ranking officials and actually bears no resemblance to reality; the reality of who and what we are.