My Place in Time

Editor’s note: We really loved Elsa’s story in Fireside this month. It was moving and eye-opening and real, even though it is science fiction. We’re thrilled that she wanted to write a bit more about the genesis of A Place Out of Time.

The night I wrote A Place Out of Time, I was thinking about the literal place of disability. Through fiction, it came out as a story about being disabled, and traveling through time. Visiting places where our bodies don’t fit—a common experience even within this timestream.

The night I wrote A Place Out of Time I read an article on Autostraddle. It listed 160 lesbian and bisexual women who had been killed on TV shows.

I remember reading the names, and at the end thinking “I can’t think of a list like this for disabled people.”

And then, I began to write.

We die in fiction.

We die in movies.

We die in TV shows.

People with disabilities are the victims of murder in real life and in fiction, and often the murderers are the ones pitied by the onlookers. Not the dead.

Two examples from recently released media:

In Jessica Jones, a disabled man begs her to kill him — out of mercy.

I had no idea that the film Me Before You would ignite the disability community and band us together as we fought against bad representation in a few short months time, or that it would be an issue in the headlines a month before publication. In Me Before You, a 30-year-old rich disabled man commits suicide because he doesn’t want to live the life of the disabled anymore.

Disabled people don’t have a space to live in society. I’m told by total strangers that they would “rather die” than lead the life I have. They’ve decided on the spot that they would rather not live inside of a disabled body, because disabled lives aren’t full, like abled one. Not according to popular culture, anyway.

A Place Out of Time is how I see our place in the timeline. Searching. Yearning. Wanting for a place that we don’t have.

I look backwards and forwards, and what I see is that we aren’t wanted. In cyberpunk, our bodies are fixed—modded and altered beyond recognition.

I want to live. I want to thrive.

In fiction, and in reality.

Elsa Sjunneson-Henry is a .5 deaf .5 blind writer from Seattle, Washington. She has a Master’s Degree in Women’s History from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared at Disability in Kidlit, XOJane, Offbeat Bride, The Women’s Media Center blog, and many other places. When not writing, she walks her hound dog on Revolutionary War battlefields with her husband. You can find her in Apex’s Upside Down anthology coming out in October, at her site Feminist Sonar, or on Twitter @snarkbat.