Disabled Rest Is Power

By Nu Misra, Narrative Revolution Fellow

Last month, I was hospitalized due to complications from chronic kidney disease. I've taken medication for as long as I can remember, and for much of my life, I’ve thought of my body as toxic. My bedroom has felt like a madhouse, my body a burial ground.

What is a "perfect" body anyway? What does it look like, feel like, move like? Does it even exist?

For a chronically ill body, where does healing begin—and where does it end? What does consistency mean? How is sickness fragmented, misinterpreted, and exploited in a capitalist world? How does the medical-industrial complex define and restrict access to care?

It’s that time again when my mortality is being questioned, my dependency on others is being renewed beyond its expiration date. As my mother bathes me—her 26-year-old child—in a hospital bathroom, I try to think of bodies contained within a medical institution.

Is medical care really care? Are hospital beds really meant for resting? 

Rest has always been defined along able-bodied parameters — to rest is to repair, to replenish body-minds such that they may be able to then prepare itself to create more labour. Rest is governed by a linear timeline -- able bodies work, they tire out, they rest, they replenish themselves, they get back to work. 

For the able bodied rest brings comfort, but it's a subject marred with discomfort. To rest is to be lazy, be unproductive, be unuseful, and therefore, unworthy. Within such a system, disabled rest is revolutionary. To embrace slowness in a world that is built against its survival is disabled resistance. 

Disabled people have a unique understanding of the body's need for rest, and often have to explore alternative ways of working to cope with the demands of a world that requires inhuman levels of productivity. Despite society viewing slowing down as a luxury, it is actually a neglected necessity. We are often forced into labels of resilience by other people who tell us to "overcome our disability." But how do we overcome our disability when it's tied to the core of the functioning of our bodies and our need for rest? How does our queerness intersect with our need for rest? Don't you think existing in an ableist homophobic world is exhausting? 

It’s in the slowing down,

in the power naps, 

in the extra time spent in bed every morning. 

It’s in the pauses, 

the relying too much on your cane, 

or leaning against your big umbrella that you carry no matter what the weather because a cane brings too many questions.

It’s saying “I need to go to bed now” or “Can we sit for a bit” or "one too many."

I think I need to get a rain check. 

I have pain and fatigue. 

It’s the days spent in sleep pants, 

the heating pads,

the violinist, 

the big pouch of medicines you carry everywhere. 

It’s on the days off from work, 

from school, 

from socializing, 

all of which you’ve started to become slightly embarrassed about but can’t stop. 

It’s in the doom scrolls, 

the binge watches, 

all those times you’ve done nothing of real significance even though you were aware that there was too much that needed to be done. 

These are the many, rather few, ways that we rest.