A tax write-off as I understand it is a tax deduction, or any legitimate expense that can be subtracted from your taxable income. I have heard of rich people “writing it off” when referring to dinners on company time or real estate used to conduct business. I never thought of myself as a write off…but some people would consider me that.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a write off is defined as a particular person or thing that is no longer useful, important, or successful. After accidents, under these terms, cars that are irreparably damaged are written off. When I was irreparably damaged myself, I guess my profession, workplace, legal team and insurance company wrote me off too. And now It’s easy to see society certainly writes people with disabilities off to some degree as well. These sound like a fictitious Seinfeld episode that would be called “The Write Off”, or better a real one called “The Package” where Kramer tries to talk Jerry into sending a broken stereo to the post office where he insists it will be ‘written off’ and replaced.
I Am Using Different Benchmarks Now
Well, I don’t consider myself a write off and would wholeheartedly say I’m useful, important and successful too. I am just using different benchmarks now, and maybe one’s society would be slow to adopt. I have learned through time, therapy, rehabilitation exercises, trial and error and lots of tears that to be useful, important and successful can look many different ways. If you feel kindness, deep thought, treating others with decency/humanity, love and respect while trying to do the right thing is useful, well that is me. If you feel that being instrumental in the lives of your family, children, and friends is important, then I am that too. And if you feel that not narrowly defining success by earning power is crucial to our society, then I am successful too.
When you have so many institutions writing you off it can be daunting but the personal resolve that comes from surviving one or more traumatic events is no match for the threat of permanently assigning you as insignificant and small. It is at these difficult junctures in life where the work towards self-actualization, appreciation, and gratitude happens and not everyone gets this opportunity to do it. Having an easy life actually teaches you less. Society prizes the earners, the rich, the consumers, the heteronormative, and the young. But the disabled, vulnerable, trauma experiencing, rehab requiring slice of humanity is where the REAL is. It’s those of us who will always understand struggle, kindness, need, basic love, the value of hard work. Using age or money as symbols of success is a misnomer.
I Am a Better Version of Myself
Miriam-Webster defines the opposite of a write off as an appreciation, enhancement or mark up from the original value. That’s me. I am in many ways a better version of myself after being permanently disabled in a car accident. Some may have written me off, or given up on me, but I haven’t given up on myself. Instead of being written off, now I’m simply writing. And like with any time I get in my car, I always readjust the mirrors, check my blind side, align my seat and check the road so I can move forward on my own terms, and not subscribe to the sometimes narrow or vacant aspirations society has laid out for me.
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This article is also featured in our 2023 Fall Issue of Sharing our Recovery.
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