It is no secret that recent years have brought more discussion to the needs of various students at Trent whose bodies do not fit the standard of what is considered “normal.” Conversations about accessibility and embracing diverse bodies are aplenty, yet it seems like these conversations always fail to reach my community.

The Possessed Community, despite its rich history reaching all the way back to 1,000 years B.P. (before Paimon), is one of the most invisibilized, demonized, and thoroughly silenced communities in the world. Society may not like to hear our gargles and tongues, but it’s time for us to proudly spider-walk into the spotlight.

We may not be human, but the Possessed are people too. I hope that this recounting of my day-to-day life as a Possessed student might open your eyes to the struggles we face.

My journey to campus begins with a bus ride where the inaccessibility of student life for Possessed people is perhaps most apparent. Most flagrant of all is the lack of seating on the ceilings of Peterborough’s buses. The assumption that no Peterborough resident could ever overcome gravity thanks to demonic powers sealed away for 600 years is damning. In spite of  their elevated median age, it is clear that no one on City Council has spoken to the vessels of any Ancient Egyptian spirits in their life.

It is rare that a day goes by without some ignorant person on the bus commenting on my tongue clicking. My fellow students seem thoroughly ignorant to cursed culture, and especially that of ancient spirits that happen to be autistic. 

When my spirit takes over, my eyes go red and I begin to babble about the Ancient Egyptian game of Senet. I can’t help but notice that I get a different reaction than, say an autistic girl named Alice talking about Guilty Gear would get. 

Intersectionality applies to receptacles of Millennial Curses too, but that’s the subject for another article. Plus, ancient scrolls are free. It is not my job to educate you.

Getting off the bus, I am assailed by light vapor steaming from the Trent-Severn waterway. Why might this pose an issue, you ask? It happens that the Trent-Severn waterway has never been tested for holy water concentrations since its formation when the Cursed One was only 400.

Sometimes, I even find myself pestered by religious missionaries, who could be carrying a cross with them—I am forced to risk this entire reincarnation just to get my Bachelor’s in Business. 

I also notice that no doors on campus are accessible to those whose joints are all dislocated. This is not even a matter of Possessed rights. Ensouled people’s frail fingers can be dislocated at the drop of a hat, this is an accessibility concern for everyone.

Having finally made it to class, the first thing I notice is—you guessed it—no ceiling seating. I begrudgingly sit on my assigned star on the learning carpet with my fellow Business students and listen to Miss Joanne take attendance (I got a special star this week for not speaking in tongues or snarling in class, and for quoting Friedrich Hayek by heart).

The fact that an incentive system exists to silence my very natural need to share word of His Great Curse is questionable, but I don’t want to go in the time-out chair for bad boys and Marxists, so I keep to myself. 

After a tiring lesson about lines going up and supply and demand comes the long-awaited snack time. Finally, a well-deserved break for this arduous vessel of Timeless Evils, you might think. Unfortunately, Possessophobia never relents, and Miss Joanne never fails to forbid my chosen snacks.

If my fellow future economists are allowed their Lunchables and Welch’s Gummies, why can’t I nibble on the neck of a live chicken in class? Plain and simple discrimination.

Another worrying case of inaccessibility is note taking. My rotting and dislocated fingers simply aren’t suited for writing with pens, hence why receptacles from time immemorial have always written in their own blood, with no issues. At Trent, however, I’m told that writing on the learning carpet with blood is “dirty,” and ceilings seem impermeable to my blood.

After a tiring lecture on the Free Market, I head to the Bata Bean, where the only bits of raw meat I can find are pitiful pieces of fish in sushi. “Hygiene standards” are the reason for my institutionally enforced starvation, I’m told.

Before heading home, I make a stop by the gymnasium, in hopes of bettering my physique to please the Cursed One. Trent’s climbing gyms are egregiously easy, and it takes me about ten seconds of spider-walking to get to the top, and ten seconds of readjusting my broken spine after I inevitably fall. It’s decent cardio, I guess, but they could really stand to increase the difficulty.

Having worked out a bit, I head to the showers, where the scent of rotting flesh instantaneously repels any chance I might have of a helping hand. How come the smell of a jacked sweaty guy is considered attractive, unless his pectoral muscles are ever-so-slightly rotten? Beauty standards continue to be unattainable, and to keep me from the kind of brotherly support I so desperately crave.

My day ends off at one of Peterborough’s local bars, where a couple cold ones with the boys help quell the Cursed One’s calls. Once again, the beauty standard of “non-dislocated necks” (which applies to literally no one in real life, by the way) keeps me from the female attention I long for. 

Typically, the Cursed One calls for me to exit the bar as soon as an indie rock band calls themselves emo (usually about 20 minutes into the evening), reminding me that “Real Emo only consists of the D.C. Emotional Hardcore scene and the late 90's Screamo scene.”