Ive been thinking a lot about how time is the one thing we try to buy and its the one thing we cant ever top up on, it just keeps on moving and unfortunately, so should we.
I lived most of my life, until the early 30s as an able bodied woman and 8yrs later, Im in awe and mostly in shock that this is the trajectory that my life took. i mean i didnt know what the future held until I was living in the present. Time didnt stand still when my life fell apart and besides dealing with the survivor’s guilt, now I feel like Im constantly trying to make up for the lost time and to redeem myself for my inability to foresee the disaster that was unravelling while I thought I was living as well as I could.
Ive only just started really feeling what its like to be an orphan with living parents, its strange grieving for parents because life experiences keep reminding me that I should have people to go back to whether it be for support or questions but for me to be estranged from my parents is because if I went for support I usually got disappointed and if I went with questions, the answers were lies, depending on who I was asking and what story they needed to fit for that day. its been and it will be for awhile, a constant unravelling over small and big things and knowing that regardless of what I do, I cant make up for the past and neither can I ever have parents I can depend on for anything.
Being chronically online means I have also started seeing how vast and deep grief can really be and I often feel sad that I cant think of my parents in a relationship with me so loving and intense that I would feel directionless without them. and it makes me sad because in as much as I might talk about how badly Ive been treated, having taken a decision to protect my mental health which also affects my physical health, there is always that one person who will ask if Im sure its not something that can be fixed and Ive tried for years, went to therapy many times to go “find the wrong in me” that made it so difficult for my mother to humanise me and it took me going to therapy in my 30s to realise that expecting somebody else to heal from my constant medicating wasnt going to work but it was time to find other things to worry about.
I always tell the story of how I moved to a strange-ish city with just 4 items of clothing & it was funny, sometimes it still is but Ive started realising that the many small items that people tend to grab as reminders for home, I didnt take anything to remind me of home or bring comfort during lonely, trying times & i have nothing of the sort. People often talk about how the worst thing about parents dying is siblings & relatives fighting over the earthly forget me nots, I always have told my mother directly or otherwise that the day she died would be the last day I would be present in her home and I wanted nothing of hers because of what it would require for me to have whatever she gives me but as fate were to have it, covid brought matters head on &any chance of ever reconciling was lost with the pandemic.
this year is promising to be a good one, im working very hard to be optimistic in the midst of all the worldly chaos, I have always hheld the belief that my life changes direction every 7yrs and with this year being my 8th year of disability, I am hoping its an omen of good tidings and fortunes.
Disability hasnt been and it still isnt always easy to accept, on days when my body feels too heavy to drag across the bed to get into my chair, or when it hurts and Im not sure why at random times, or when I am lurking in my friends sm accounts with envy about their free and abled lives, Im reminded that in as much as I have accepted that this is where its at, its still one of the hardest things to be, disabled.
Here is to the 8th year, I have many wishes for myself, hoping to win the lottery being one of them but I hope this year is graceful to me and accessibility becomes less of a challenge in every aspect of my life.