Tag: disability

Can I ask you something?

Guys, can I be honest with you: I am tired, physically and emotionally. In fact, I am beyond tired and I don’t like it.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been getting a lot more aches and pains that normal, especially for this time of year. These things are usually worse in the winter when it’s cold, but the UK has been having some lovely warm weather lately. When this happens, I try and spend as little time in the house as possible, but not this time. I’ve had no energy what so ever lately. The majority of my days are punctuated with naps, and some times more than one a day.

I want to be in the sunlight, but the thought of moving more than necessary makes me want to weep. I have an errand that I’ve been meaning to run all week, but I just can’t face it. My first thought when I wake up in the morning is “everything aches”. My Cerebral Palsy is on my mind far more than I would like these days. It feels like it’s trying to show me who’s boss, and what’s worse is that, right now, it’s like it’s winning. I want to fight but I just can’t seem to.

This is not like me. I think anyone whose been reading this blog a while could tell you that. I know they’re tonnes of people who are far worse off than me, but I feel like I need to tell you all that it’s getting me down.

Does that make me weak?

Does that make me ungrateful?

Does that make me even weaker?

I keep thinking about booking myself in for a massage or something, but I’ve never been for one before, and part of me doesn’t like the idea of going for one. I’m not entirely sure why this is. Maybe it’s because  it will mean that by doing that I have to face up to what’s going on? Maybe it’s because another person will then feel the tightness in my muscles? That’s an unsettling thought.

Do you guys go through phases like this? How do you deal with them?

 

More thoughts on looking at my refelction

You may or may not know that I’ve been attending creative writing classes for the last few weeks. Last week’s homework (the topic I chose to do anyway), was to write about an event in the first person but to use the word ‘I’ only twice. After the vlog that I posted last week about how I see myself in my head and how I look when I see myself in a my reflection, I decided to write about looking in the mirror.

I’d like to share what I wrote with you.

 

Looking in the mirror is a very strange experience for me. It forces me to confront the impact that Cerebral Palsy has on my body, and that is not always an easy thing to deal with.

Although I would not swap my disability for the world and consider it to only be a side-note in my life, it means that the person who stares back at me in my reflection is not the woman my mind’s eye expects to see.

While my imagination likes to pretend the girl others meet stands and sits up straight with half-decent posture and a left arm that doesn’t naturally sit in a curled up position that is not the case. Staying away from reflective surfaces means my brain can keep pushing my disability to the back of my mind and focus on living my life to the full and gloss over the fact it might come up against limitations from to time. It that dominated my thoughts, what would be the point in trying anything?

Dancing is a favorite pass time of mine, during which my eyes often stay closed and my sub conscious conjures up images of the moves my body would love to make, if only my Cerebral Palsy would allow it. Alas, it does not, but that’s a moot point, if you ask me. Seeing myself as others see me does not upset me, but instead it makes me angry that my CP plays a far bigger role in my life than I would like to admit. You can call me disillusioned if you’d like, but my word of choice is indifferent, both towards my disability and the limitations it tries to impose on me.

No matter how hard it fights against me, it will never win. This girl will keep on dancing, not matter how it looks. She will use her body with pride because she loves it. As far as my self-image is concerned, there is no CP most of the time, just a girl who likes to throw herself into, and considers herself to be just as good (or bad) at dancing as everyone else.

Riding the merry-go-round

The thing about my Cerebral Palsy is that it sometimes makes me feel a bit like I’m riding  merry-go-round, but not one that goes at a steady pace and plays soothing music; one that goes far too fast and shakes you right down to the bones.

I feel like this blog has lost its positive attitude of late. I haven’t been writing about ‘fun’ topics. I feel like I haven’t said anything that might make you all smile for a couple of weeks now. Sorry about that, but when I started this blog I wanted it to be as honest as I could about my life with my disability, and that means that I have to talk about this stuff whether I like it or not. I don’t, as it happens, but I think you probably knew that already.

You see, I feel like I’ve been riding the merry-go-round lately. This happens sometimes. I get into a cycle where things don’t feel like they’re going great for me from a CP point of view, and I  just have to wait and ride it out until it’s my turn to get off again and things can get back to ‘normal,’ (don’t you just hate that word?), and I start to feel better both physically and emotionally.

It started a couple of weeks ago when I started having pains in my hip and I had to face up to the fact that I’ve been letting my physio slip. This week it’s my back that’s decided it’s going to hurt. Next week, my shoulders might well decide that it’s their turn to play up. Then again, they might not. It might be a different set of muscles or body parts, or I might feel fine, who knows?

Round and round I’ll have to go.

Round and round I will go, moving from physio and stretches to putting wheatbags on the sore area, all the while I will be continually asking myself what I might have done that’s caused this aches and pains. I’ll tell myself it’s not my fault, I’ll tell myself it is. If I can’t fix it, I’ll beat myself up over it. I’ll tell myself off for not having the answers even though I’m not a physio and no one expects me to have all the answers. Yet,  somehow, I expect myself to. I feel like I’ve been going through these cycles for so long and I should be able to stop them, but I  can’t. Maybe I’ll never learn how.

I’ll toy with the idea of asking for an appointment with my physio countless times, but I always feel guilty about asking for one. What if things aren’t as ‘bad’ as I think they are? What if I’m taking away a slot from someone who needs it more?

Around and around I’ll go, until things stop aching.

 

 

 

Fun Fact Friday [7]

Hello and welcome to Fun Fact Friday, a feature in which I share facts about myself that aren’t linked to my Cerebral Palsy.

Today, I want to talk about phobias. I have quite a few myself. I won’t go in the sea because I’m scared of crabs, I hate the thought of getting on a boat, and I’m pretty scared of dogs too. Especially the ones I don’t know. I mean, what if they jump up at me and knock me over?

Those are just a few, but those are not the things that scare me most of all. Oh, no. My biggest phobia is the eight-legged-creepy-crawly things that we call spiders.  Even small ones have been known to make me scream, have a racing heart and, make me try my best to run away in case they come after me.

One started crawling up my bed sheets once. I was nearly sick. You probably think I’m joking. I’m not.

One spun down from the ceiling on its web and landed in my hair once while I was reading and landed in my hair. My mother says she’s never seen me move so fast. My family thought it was hilarious. Needless to say, I did not.

I wish I  could say that I can get close enough to them to catch them them in a glass, but I can’t even do that for the following reasons:

  1. It involves getting close to the spider
  2. If it’s on the floor I have trouble bending down to reach it
  3. It involves getting close to the spider
  4. It might drop it or fall over and then I’d have no idea where they thing scurried off to
  5. It involves getting close to the spider

So yeah, in summary, today’s Fun Fact Friday is that I hate spiders.

 

NEW VLOG: looking at Cerebral Palsy in my refelction

Hi guys,

I’m back with a brand new vlog. Thanks to everyone who watched the last one. Today I talk about how I feel when I look in the mirror and notice how my Cerebral Palsy impacts on the way I hold myself.