If there was one thing I never imagined when I was 16 and planning my final years of high school in order to pursue a career in law, it would be that I would be disabled while doing so. When I was diagnosed at age 21, I didn’t stop to think about how it would affect me long term outside of a medical context. And for a while, I could pretend it didn’t. At least until, the wheels fell off.
Tag: hypermobility
Q&A: Self-advocacy fails and what I learned from them
There’s a lot floating around on the Internet about the importance of self-advocacy, and I see a lot about what that can look like, but not so much about what to do when everything goes wrong. I answer: What is your biggest regret? What is a common miscommunication? What is a recent success?
Where in the world is Chronically Clumsy
Like most people, 2020 was a bit of a write-off for me. I had so much on my plate that something had to give , and unfortunately it was this.... I don’t want to go into too much detail, because I want Chronically Clumsy to be a constructive and motivating corner of the internet, but I do think it’s important to discuss what happened so I can share what I learned.
Accountability as a Chronic Illness Blogger
Personal accountability, and the pathology behind why CI contributors post what they do, is a topic that is either delicately skirted around, or quickly devolves into an emotionally-charged flurry of comments in someone else's post.
2019 Update
I've been absent for a while. Honestly, this is the first time I've even been able to go near my keyboard and to attempt to write. It hurts, but in a good way. It aches the way that muscles do after physical therapy. There's that sharp pang followed by a sigh of relief after relocating a joint.
Progress
This morning, I woke up at 5am. Normally, like any young adult, my reaction would be to groan at waking up at such an ungodly hour, but today I was ecstatic, I slept for five consecutive hours last night! After the week I've had, where I've been lucky to get an hour total, it felt absolutely amazing to get some proper sleep.
Wake-up call
My pain reached the point where I was actually in tears, struggling in vain to convince myself that I was fine, hoping that if I just told myself to be strong it would go away on its own. Luckily, I have some amazing people in my life who know the difference between when I'm being brave, and when I'm just putting on a brave face.
Harsh reality
I was really hoping that I could start out this blog all positive, but I guess that’s something that I’ll have to accept, sometimes illness has other plans. I just have to do my best to work with what I’ve got, if I have less spoons today than normal, that’s ok. Hopefully there’ll be a day when I don’t have to count my spoons quite as obsessively, but until then, I just need to come to terms with the fact that my daily supply of spoons is finite, but it doesn’t mean that my daily amount of happiness is, just, for now, I have to find it in different places.
The Journey Begins
If my journey was a book, I guess I'd call this blog Chapter One after a long, convoluted, and confusing Introduction.
Yes, I do realise that sounds trite as anything, but my health journey has been confusing and all over the place, and I'm still trying to make sense of it myself.
Chronically Clumsy 