Dire Threat

“Autism spectrum disorder now affects 1 in 36 children in the United States — a staggering increase from rates of 1 to 4 out of 10,000 children identified with the condition during the 1980s[..] This poses a dire threat to the American people and our way of life.”
                                                                                                          ***
         It’s a rhetoric I’m used to. No matter what era we live in, disability has always been stigmatized as the “other”- a demonic force, a cause for isolation, something to make fun of. We’ve been chained to radiators, held hostage in institutions against our will (sometimes for our whole lives), and murdered by the people we trusted our bodies towards to the point where we have a day dedicated to mourning that fact: March 1st.
         Except instead of a Facebook post with a handful of likes, that quote is taken directly from the Make America Healthy Again Commission. On February 13th, 2025. To the most powerful forces in the country and their supporters, my very existence is a threat first and foremost. 
         I am an embodiment of DEI. Very obviously Anglo-American and barely able to afford schooling, but I’m also disabled. I’m queer. Born a woman with no religion I call my own. Instead, I have a slew of health disorders, physical and mental, that I’d list if only for the fact that it’s too personal for what’s already supposed to be a personal essay. Hell, I major in the liberal arts and one of my minors is in Ethnic Studies.
         I’m also in an academic society- Sigma Tau Delta, the most prestigious honor for an English student, all because of my 3.9 GPA. I even got selected to present a creative nonfiction piece at their most recent convention, a notoriously difficult feat for non-academic pieces. I’m the editor-in-chief of my school’s literary magazine, Persona, and the vice president of the Westfield State TV Club. I’m on the English department Curriculum Committee and served my time working at CURCA academic events, both as a poster designer and emcee. I was an assistant to our administrative assistant under contract and interned at a publishing company, both to great success. I even got to co-create a course in my school’s Communication department (my other minor) last semester that is returning this fall.
         I like writing, reading, and playing video games. I love watching Scott the Woz, Diamondbolt, and Schaffrillas Productions. I collect things with the money I’ve earned, both from manual labor and writing commissions. Whenever someone mentions my hyperfixations, like Metal Gear or Silent Hill, I burst from my self-induced cocoon and connect with others like me in a flurry of joy. I’ve been in a romantic relationship for over five years with one of the kindest, most understanding people I’ve ever known, despite him living all the way in California, a far cry from my state of Massachusetts.
         But California is burning. The whole country is. Everything I love, stand for, and am means nothing now that they face inevitable ruin. Instead of enjoying my last semester of college, I’m trudging past adults screaming at me in front of the dining hall. I’m listening to rhetoric that history was supposed to leave behind well before I was born, if they had to exist at all. I’m walking around gathering and dumping QR codes because illiteracy has gone rampant, down to understanding the campus rules. The people who peaked in middle school that tormented those like me have gone back to their roots, only now in a place of power.
         I am the host of a demon that needs to be exorcised, regardless of whether or not it kills me. I am Laurence, the sickly grey puppet from All in a Row. I am fodder for ragebait accounts on Twitter, a pariah for the sadistic. I am Lennie Small, ripe for being taken into a corner of the woods and shot.
         I am a dire threat.
         I’ve been bullied for just existing for a good chunk of my life. I’ve grappled with the fact that I will never truly fit in. Scars can heal, but some never leave no matter what you do to them. Ignorance doesn’t solve everything. When I graduate in a few months, I’ll only be thrown headfirst into a world who wants me to grovel under its heel as it plunders and pillages until we have no ground to stand on. And as it all goes down, only half of those around me will be against it.
         But it’s that other half that keeps me going. They’re as much of a threat as I am, if not worse- impoverished, first-generation, Chinese, Arabs, veterans, engineers, scientists, authors, artists, journalists, and worst of all, educated. They’re strong, resourceful, informative, and vocal. They work in publishing houses and factories, grocery stores and law firms, healthcare centers and activist organizations. They bring light when it feels that there’s no room left for it. They’re people so well-accomplished and fun to be around that I wish I’d spoken to them sooner. That I had them in my life when I needed them the most. They take the bricks thrown at them and build a foundation to stand on.
         I fear how long it will stand. Media censorship has taken off like never before. Maybe this very text will become contraband. Grounds for a school-wide crackdown so it can deny funding from the crumbs of our former Department of Education. Even if it’s cleared, we know that money won’t be found anywhere near our disabled students. And despite that fact, there will be those in the community who will support it regardless, because they’ve lost their ability to see us as human, if they ever did to begin with.
         On May 16th, 2025, a diploma will be handed to dire threats across many colleges and universities across the country. In truth, nobody knows how the United States will be at that point: a third impeachment, a third term legalized, a third World War. But the only way through the rocky path is forward. Even if the wider community rejects me by that point, I will have another to fall back on. A community, in both my hometown and beyond, that sticks together through the darkest of times and persists, just as we have time and time again. People who make me feel like… people. One that sees me for who I am, not for what.
         I am an academic. I am a writer. I am a reader. I am strong. I am kind. I am an introvert. I am funny. I am hard-working. I am loyal. I am queer. I am disabled.
         I am a dire threat, because I am a person.
                                                                                                         ***
“Both you and I… we were always alone. Always. We only wanted to be loved… We were always waiting- waiting for somebody… somebody who would love us. But we were wrong. You can’t wait to be loved. You have to go out and find it. Four years ago… I realized that you can’t just wish for a happy family. You have to make it happen. I only wish I knew sooner.”
                                                                                            -  Otacon, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty






Queer and disabled, Faith Roy is currently a senior at Westfield State University, majoring in English with a writing concentration and a double-minor in Communication and Ethnic Studies. Faith is also the Editor-in-Chief of WSU's literary magazine, Persona, and was recently selected as a student presenter at this year’s annual Sigma Tau Delta convention.