I'm probably one of the few queer people who hate the spoons analogy. It was originally a mental construct an individual with lupus was using to explain why some days, she just couldn't do it. Everything we did during our day correlated with spoons, and you had spoons taken away when something taxing happened. This quickly became a flagship for LGBT minorities to explain why they felt living in a heteronormative world was so exhausting. It's entirely possible it gained popularity in other arenas as well (other than, you know, its intended audience of those living with an invisible illness), but the LGBT community is what I know, so that's what I'm going to talk about.
I don't agree with the move to adopt this analogy. The person who wrote this blog had an invisible illness. Not a minority issue. And granted, their status as a minority plays a part; however, that is in additional to the mental/physical/neurological/etc disorder that is literally making their lives more difficult on a daily basis.
I don't have to worry about if my fibro is going to act up when I try to tie my shoes, if my dyslexia is going to make it take three times longer to do the same homework that my peers are doing, if my deafness is going to mean that every conversation I have with someone who can hear is going to be arduous, or if my bipolar disorder is going to destroy my emotional ties to friends and family through no control of my own.
I don't have to worry about that, because I am well within the acceptable norms of sound mind and body. The struggle that LGBT individuals go through is a significant one, and I'm not denying that. But you know what that substance is called, that propels LGBT individuals to continue on regardless of hardships? It's called energy. When I've had a bad day and just can't deal anymore, I don't call that "running out of spoons" I call that "running out of energy." Because that's what it is. If the lack of energy for people with invisible illnesses could be explained as a lack of energy, she wouldn't have needed the profound "spoons" analogy. She could have just said energy. Or patience. Or motivation. But she said spoons. Which suggests to me something far more tangible than energy.
When I was in high school, I had pretty serious problems with social anxiety. It caused sleep paralysis and hypnogogic hallucinations, which only made the anxiety worse, as it induced insomnia. I would avoid speaking to people I considered my friends for months at a time. I would hyperventilate if I had to talk in public or sit in a crowded room. I would flinch at any sudden movement I didn't expect. My friends knew this about me. They said I had "social month"s. It wasn't a "social month" so it was okay that no one saw Lynn for the entire month of March.
I talked to some of my friends during one of these non-social months and they were actually shocked enough to comment on it. "I'm suprised," they said "This isn't one of your social months, so I didn't expect to see you for another couple of weeks."
That's not energy. That's something deeper and more ingrained -something that has nothing to do with energy and everything to do with an invisible, unstoppable limit that won't change even when you want it to. That's spoons. Because when I run out of spoons, I don't say goodnight for the day and then feel better tomorrow. I avoid everyone I know for a month.
So talking about energy for dealing with ignorance in the same way as the pain of an invisible illness or physical disorder is, itself, ignorant. It is not the same thing. And I think, to respect those who do deal with invisible illness on a daily basis, we should respect that.
