WHEN CRIP TIME IS CHRONIC
- Sav Schlauderaff
- Dec 29, 2019
- 8 min read
This piece was originally written and published December 29, 2019 on www.queerfutures.com by sav schlauderaff
Crip time
Disability-studies literature has shown increasing interest in the concept of “crip time,” mentioned in 1993 by Irving Zola and later elaborated by Alison Kafer (2013), Margaret Price (2011; 2015) and Ellen Samuels (2014). We are especially interested in the aspect of crip time that suggests not just its slowing down or speeding up along a linear scale, but its tendency to shape-shift.
“Crip time is flex time not just expanded but exploded; it requires reimagining our notions of what can and should happen in time, or recognizing how expectations of ‘how long things take’ are based on very particular minds and bodies” (27) Alison Kafer, Feminist Queer Crip, 2013.
“One of the gifts of disability and moving on “crip time” — slowly — is that we notice things that people moving quickly typically miss. Another value is that more people are able to remain active for the long haul.”
“This is also what I know: time works differently for each of us. Listen to your bodymind and ask it what it needs, what it truly needs. Disabled, chronically ill loves: don’t measure your time, your productivity, by what others do. Your bodymind’s need for crip time is liberatory brilliance.”
“And yet recently I have found myself thinking about the less appealing aspects of crip time, that are harder to see as liberatory, more challenging to find a way to celebrate.”
Crip time is me taking weeks of starting and stopping writing out these thoughts, because I can only sit upright for an hour, my migraines give me double vision and light sensitivity so my laptop quickly becomes unbearable, and my bodymind needs rest time to recover from graduate school exertion and travel.
This is nothing new, but it is frustrating all the same. Because these thoughtfeelings feel so urgent. Something is not right here. Crip time means that things take longer, but this expanded exploded time also means more time sitting in pain in depression in guilt for not being more productive. Crip time can be funny or beneficial when experienced with others, but on my own it often feels isolating. lonely. Like Ellen Samuels explaines in her article “six ways of looking at crip time,” there are less appealing aspects to crip time. These less appealing aspects have felt highlighted, bolded, underlined for me this past year as I have actively sought out specialists and medical care, often to be dismissed once a medication or treatment somewhat works. And as my energy levels and bodymind mix of pain and numbness have continued to negatively impact me. That crip time is time travel, crip time is grief time, crip time is broken time, crip time is sick time, crip time is writing time (Samuels, 2017). Crip time is….
Chronic adj.
(of an illness) persisting for a long time or constantly recurring.
two overlaid images of sav sitting turning both to the left and right
Most all my illnesses are chronic.
My pain shows up like clockwork.
This is what I know about my bodymind:
Stiffness and nausea when I wake up turns into excruciating sharp pains and numbness or loss of function by the end of the day if I push myself too far.
My bodymind will always collapse after a conference or travel.
October, July and August always force me to be painfully pulled back in time, to re-experience my traumas.
My depression will always worsen in the spring, I will always get sick at the end of a semester.
My right leg will go numb and heavy during every seminar class.
I will always get shooting pains down my arms, and my hands will curl into uneven fists if I stay still for too long.
My body needs me to move, shift and shake. The twitches and tremors come on their own.
This is what I don’t know:
Is there a way to escape chronic?
Does knowing these patterns even help if I can’t step out of them?
What do I do with the looming unpredictability?
What can I do with my sadness?
With my loneliness?
With my grief?
With my fear?
Where do these weighted emotions settle inside me?
What is my bodymindspirit dealing with that I can’t see? That I can’t begin to conceptualize?
How can I learn to not label my chronically ill bodymind as a failure?
How do you quantify persistent pain when your days and years bleed together?
When your past and present become melded?
When your memory fails you?
Weathering verb
wear away or change the appearance or texture of (something) by long exposure to the air.
come safely through (a storm).
two overlaid images, one of sav’s legs and another of blooming ocotillo plants. They look as if they are wrapping around sav’s legs.
I’m still processing spring 2018. What it feels like to be subsumed in the trauma of assault. The constant reprisal of this pain, how it wakes up and prods old wounds. I know my body doesn’t heal well or quickly but I am so exhausted. My body doesn’t feel like my own and why I am consistently reminded of this? Can I be counted as coming safely through the storm if the storm never stops? If it stays present is my peripheral view? What are the textures of pain? The dull smooth pains are punctuated by the jagged sharp and sporadic pains. The ones that force me to stop, hold my breath, and wait. Weathering. Wearing. Wasting. Is my weight loss due to my exhaustion, my pain, my anorexia flying under the radar? I feel weak and small. Have I come safely through the storm? At what expense? How do you weather a storm if you’re unsure about what is causing it? Fatigued adj. drained of strength and energy : affected by fatigue
two overlaid images, one of sav with their arms covering their chest, and another of a bright pink bougainvillea plant. The flowers cover sav’s body and grow around them.
Crip time is deciding whether my bodymind will be able to handle my 3 hour roundtrip commute on the bus to my cardiologist, or if I should pay the $20 some dollars each way for a lyft. It necessitates continuous looking to the future to make decisions about my present. To decipher if my decision will be too detrimental to my future self. And if yes, how much really. It is endlessly trying to predict the unpredictability of my bodymind. As Margaret Price describes, “crip time is unpredictable; it speeds up and slows down, jumps, bends and twists” (2016). My fatigue overcomes me. Often overgrown like a bougainvillea bush always growing towards the sun. I become enveloped. Isolated adj. having minimal contact or little in common with others. See also: lonely, solitary, by oneself
two overlaid images, one of sav’s back hunched over and another of exposed tree roots growing up a small hill.
I feel myself drifting away I feel frustrated at my own isolation. That my body’s fatigue and pain and aches make it harder to reach out, make plans, feel wanted, feel connected. This past year and a half have felt like I am disappearing and like my friendships are dissolving. That I can’t stay out late unless I can bear jerky bumpy public transportation or if I use all my energy to bike. “The diseases can be extremely isolating: physical symptoms like lethargy and chronic pain come with the fact that one’s new reality does not sync with dominant norms or understandings” Taraneh Fazeli “‘Notes for “Sick Time, Sleepy Time, Crip Time: Against Capitalism’s Temporal Bullying’ in conversation with the Canaries” Stepping out of normative time, or “straight time”, I feel stuck with my past/present/future pulling me all at once. I am forced to determine what part(s) of me need tending to. Forced to always be searching inward. To chronically be ill and in pain. To always be unwell, and made unwell (Mimi Khúc). To feel like talking about this will suck the energy out of a room. Why does pain have to be so loud? I feel out of place, out of time, out of sync, out of breath. I need timespace to recharge and tend to my pains, but am constantly craving to not feel alone. Lonely adj. 1a: being without company : LONE 1b: cut off from others : SOLITARY 2: not frequented by human beings : DESOLATE 3: sad from being alone : LONESOME 4: producing a feeling of bleakness or desolation
two overlaid images of sav, they are crouching down and covering their face in one photo, and turning their head away in the other.
“How can I ask anyone to love me, when all I do is beg to be left alone?” (Fiona Apple, Left Alone)
Who taught you to sort out your pain in silence?
To stop crying so loud, too often, too much.
When crip time is chronic, it means learning to live in a state of listening to your bodymind.
This act of listening isn’t easy.
But does it have to be done alone?
My chronic pain and illnesses have filled me up with aches and loneliness.
But have also taught me how to tend and care for others.
To listen to their pains.
To help make them laugh.
To sit, or lay, in crip time together.
We experience so much of this in the same timespace, but I find myself retreating inward when I become overwhelmed.
To hoard my pain until it becomes a hard rock in my stomach and weights down limbs.
Until my bruises bloom on the surface of my skin.
My body shouts out my pain for me when I hold my words back.
I’m lonely.
I need care.
I too need someone to listen.
Works Cited All articles and media are hyperlinked within the article. Apple, Fiona. (2012). Left Alone. The Idler Wheel is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do. Epic Records. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/Fdiy9NhlBII Fazeli, Taraneh. (May 26, 2016). Notes for “Sick Time, Sleepy Time, Crip Time: Against Capitalism’s Temporal Bullying’ in conversation with the Canaries. Temporary. Retrieved from: http://temporaryartreview.com/notes-for-sick-time-sleepy-time-crip-time-against-capitalisms-temporal-bullying-in-conversation-with-the-canaries/ Kafai, Shayda. (January 27, 2019). Sleeping in is How we Crip Time. Sunday Sentiments. Queer Futures Collective. Retrieved from https://www.queerfutures.com/sundaysentiments/2019/1/27/sleeping-in-is-how-we-crip-time-by-shayda-kafai Kafer, Alison. (2013). Feminist Queer Crip. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Khuc, Mimi. The Revolution is in the Heart. TEDxUMD. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/3mBRcSH5IHY Bader, Eleanor J. (November 27, 2018). Reimagining Disability Justice: An Interview with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved from https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/interviews/reimagining-disability-justice-interview-leah-lakshmi-piepzna-samarasinha/ Price, Margaret & Stephanie Kerschbaum. (2016). Stories of Methodology:Interviewing Sideways, Crooked and Crip. Telling Ourselves Sideways, Crooked, and Crip. Canadian Journal of Disability Studies. 5(13): 18-56. Samuels, Ellen. (2017). Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time. Disability Studies Quarterly. 37(3). Retrieved from: https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/5824/4684 note: the use of definitions to punctuate this essay is inspired by Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugutivity by Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Detailing Trauma: A Poetic Anatomy by Arianne Zwartjes.
Sav is a trans, queer and disabled PhD student in Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Their research in critical disability studies questions the ways chronically ill individuals engage with mainstream medicine, biotechnology, biohacking and alternative forms of healing. As well as the interconnections between trauma, chronic illness, pain, (embodied/felt) memory, and self care/community care for the bodymindspirit. Sav utilizes their academic training in genetics, molecular biology and gender studies with autobiography, poetry and new media. They graduated from San Diego State University in 2018 with their M.A. in Women's Studies, where they completed their thesis "Rejecting the Desire for 'Health': Centering Crip Bodyminds in Genetic Testing"--bridging their undergraduate degrees in Genetics, Cell Biology and Development (GCD) and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies (GWSS) from the University of Minnesota--Twin Cities. Beyond, and intertwining with, their academic research, Sav is passionate about education, activism and community building especially around the LGBTQIA+ communities, trauma/PTSD, eating disorder recovery, and disability--in addition to the multiple intersections of these topics and identities. They always strive to create accessible, intersectional, collaborative and intentional workshops and lectures. They have worked to create interactive workshops, classrooms, internship programming, and mentorship connections with undergraduates and high school students centering the values of radical vulnerability, kindness, listening, and meaningful reflection. Outside of research, they are currently the Graduate Assistant at the Disability Cultural Center, a Safe Zone facilitator at the LGBTQ+ Resource Center, and a member of the Disability Studies Initiative at the University of Arizona. Sav is a co-founder of "The Queer Futures Collective" where they experiment with different forms of writing, workshops, and performances in-person and online. Sav integrates reflective journaling with theoretic work in their Sunday Sentiments articles, and creates accessible teaching materials and handouts that are free for users to download.
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