chronicpain09:

PLEASE DO NOT SEE THE MOVIE ME BEFORE YOU. It is incredibly ableist and honestly insulting to the disability community. You want to know why I’m so upset about this movie? When i was about 8 i was doing a back handspring out in my yard and considering i did acrobatics it wasn’t a big deal. However, this time was different, i made a positioning error and would up landing on my neck. When i tried to get up i couldn’t, my legs and arms wouldn’t move. I started screaming and crying and my friends ran to go get help. I remember everything about what happened: my parents on the phone with 911, being in the ambulance, at the hospital in a neck brace getting all sorts of scans and tests done. I remember laying in my hospital bed being quadriplegic and absolutely terrified. My parents thought i would be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life and so did my doctors. It was a miracle when feeling came back into my arms and legs. For those of you who do not know the plot of the movie/book it’s about a man who comes from a wealthy family and is in a horrible accident leaving him quadriplegic. He wants to end his life but his family promises to give him 6 more months and if he’s not happy by then he can end his life. During these 6 months he meets a new caretaker and falls in love with her. The trailers of this movie make it seem as though once he meets her life is better and he is finally happy. However, at the end of the movie he winds up having an assisted suicide his family is happy they no longer need to care for him and he leaves this girl a bunch of money so she can travel and “live boldly” as the movie puts it and it is portrayed as benefiting everyone. All i can think of is some scared little girl in a hospital bed paralyzed watching this movie because she thinks he finds happiness when really he ends his life. I’ve seen posts in the support group i run from disabled people saying this movie plot makes them want to end their lives. Not only that, i received a message on my blog yesterday from a young girl telling me she read the plot of the movie and it made her want to end her life, i talked her out of it luckily but what this movie is doing to the disabled community is horrific. Not only does this movie romanticize suicide it is making others who are disabled want to end their lives as well. If you see this movie you are feeding into the ideology that people who are disabled should all end their lives and the world is better without us. Don’t go pay to see this movie, it’s bad enough this is already a book.