Sunday 9 December 2007

Emma, Emma, Quite Contrary.

I feel contrary lately. I can't really explain it, I just do.

Or maybe indifferent would be another way to describe it. Perhaps both contrary and indifferent, I don't really know.

Being disabled and using a wheelchair frustrates me at the moment. But it isn't the fact I've got Cerebral Palsy and can't walk that causes it.

It's the friend who likes to comment on a regular basis that I take "really a lot of medication" - I take two daily meds and two pain killers (two different sorts, I mean) as and when I need to. I need those medication; they've beneftted me a lot. But it has been mentally hard for me to accept that and to take them. I wish she would shut up. For the benefits they give me I am very grateful; and I'm also grateful that it is only two meds. As one of my doctors once put it - I could function without most of my meds but they (muscle relaxant and pain killers) greatly improve my quality of life.  I'm no longer sure I agree with that but I do understand where he comes from with that quality of life statement.

It's the colleague who goes "oh can't you do that." or "I never would have thought you'd need help with THAT" when I ask for help with small things.

It's being told I'm "imagining things" when I express how much I feel that lately people are seeing the wheelchair and not the girl in it.   And more so when I say that a few people around me tried to make a big deal of my wheelchair and make people notice it.  Maybe I am imagining it, I don't know.  But what I do know is that is how I feel - and being told I'm imaging it is not helpful.  It just makes me feel worse.  The other thing I do know is that I am "so much more than 'that girl in the wheelchair'" as I wrote on my about me page but at the moment I do feel that the wheelchair is all people care about.

It's being told that I'll "have to learn to accept help" when I answered Thank you but no when offered help.  And it's the patronising "the help might not be offered one day and you may really need it so you should accept it now" when I explained that it was both easier and safer for me to do it myself.  Maybe that might make me the little crippled version of the boy who cried wolf one days in the future - but I'll take that risk.

It's the comment that I enjoy using the internet because of my wheelchair - no, I enjoy the intrawebs because I just do.  Wheelchair be damned.  The only affect it has on my 'net time is that it gives me somewhere comfy to sit.  (as a side note however, huge props to that particular person for being convinced by my explanation of that AND apologising).

So it's not the CP and it's not the wheelchair.

It, once again, comes down to the way others view me and my chair.  They way they react to the "crippled girl"

And how it differs from who I am, how I view myself and how I react to my disability.  There we come again to another reason why I feel that I've lost confidence lately.

Oh and as a slightly unrelated side note, I had great fun shocking someone on friday.  They commented about how a do we're going to doesn't have a license but you can "bring a bottle" and how a lot of people going can't drink due to medication.  When asked if I could I replied "well the doctor said i'd need to avoid it and I asked what that meant.  we negotiated and I'm allowed one or two drinks."

Let's just say she was a little shocked.   C'mon doctors aren't gods after all, there word isn't law... and I was at uni still when I started the med.  These meds are likely life long (some of them) and for me never to have the odd vodka again is unrealistic.  I'm disabled, not dead.

1 comment:

Shiloh said...

I empathize with you 100%.

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