You’ve heard of glass slippers…

3rd Oct 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

If I tell you that I have a blister on my foot, then obviously you’re going to draw on your own experiences of the same thing in order to visualise or imagine it. But if then in the same breath, I tell you that a blister on my foot is enough to land me on crutches – or in a wheelchair back when I was at school – because the poor circulation and diminished sensation in my feet mean that it’s going to take ages to heal and is therefore vulnerable to infection, I’ve sort of showered with big words and abstract concepts, so you can’t really understand what I mean because you’ve got no direct experience of the same thing.

But so what? Why would you need to fully engage with this aspect of my disability anyway?

Well, I mean, you don’t really need to if you’re not very close to me. But then again, I’ve been left in a wheelchair or with infections because of people- including (though not limited to) friends, nurses, and security guards – hearing the word ‘blister’ and totally dismissing it as a big deal because it wouldn’t be if it was on their foot. Therefore, it’d probably help a lot of disabled people if everyone was encouraged to gain a little perspective on the delicacy and temperamentality of disability.

I effectively have a wound on my foot which I do my best every day to not fully reopen. And I use the word ‘fully’ here because this wound is never totally healed. It’s an opening in scar tissue from having three operations on the same foot to correct its positioning and improve the way I walk – I had three of the same type of operation (tendon transfers) because the first ended with a very dramatic infection, the second didn’t work, and the third kind of worked but by that point, I had no tendon left to transfer…These operations all happened in the years up until about 7. That scar tissue healed and fully closed when I was 18. Then it opened right back up again about six months later and is still open now.

Another caveat for you though, when I say that it’s ‘open’, I don’t mean some gory, bloody, oh my god that makes me feel a bit sick situation. Basically, on the side/bottom of my foot, I have these dots where the scar isn’t shut, which bleed, but are covered by a layer of hard skin – I guess, kind of like if you put a flat plate of glass on some paint. If I’m lucky, the dots are the size of a pinhead and the blood is black (therefore, not bleeding), but the dots can get bigger if pressure has been applied (i.e. by walking too much), and the blood moves through the gaps, and occasionally the blood is pushed to then form a blister. If it’s really bad, then there’s no blister at all; I just bleed from the center of the scar tissue. And it’s never fully healed because I walk on it: since that’s kind of how you use feet.

So I guess, technically, my foot is always bleeding – except for that six months when I was 18 – but it’s only a problem when that blood breaks through the glass layer of skin and reaches my sock. Under the glass, I can see it, but it’s not open and therefore vulnerable to infection; out of the glass…well, bacteria can get to it and cause some issues.

However, I can’t feel my feet; I take care of them purely by sight. I can see when a blister is about to develop, or if an infection is brewing, but the second I’m not looking, I don’t know what’s going on. This means that I look all the time, though I’ll be honest and say that sometimes I just won’t look because sometimes I don’t want to see the spiderweb of blood on the side of my foot. Instead, I’ll feel it with my hand for blisters, and if there aren’t any, I’ll spare myself the somewhat threatening image for a day.

This small part of my body is ridiculously delicate and yet it holds so much power over my life. I go to regular appointments to keep the glass layer of skin over the scar strong enough to not break, but thin enough to not cause blisters itself, and still, the weather, the condition of my footwear, and the amount of walking I do can create a crack or cause it to build up too much so that the next time I take off my shoes I’m greeted by a circle of blood on my sock. Always love that.

I could go on for hours speaking about the experiences I’ve had with this part of my body; the times when it’s caused me intense grief, frightened me, or deeply irritated me, but that’s for other blogs. What I want you to take away from these paragraphs, is (hopefully) the knowledge of why I can spontaneously end up on crutches when yesterday you saw me walking; why I can tell you that I’ve got a blood blister on my foot but walk and seem exactly the same as last week when I had ‘no problem at all’. But most of all, I want you to know that even when I don’t have a blister or an infection, that’s because I look at my foot religiously to ensure that those things don’t happen.

Life with a disability isn’t one set of simple, fixed symptoms that manifest in exactly the same way daily. I’m not stressed or upset about my foot every day because I’m used to it, and because I do a lot to make sure that it doesn’t need to cause me stress or upset every day. But if you take away or change one part of this foundation my parents and I have built my life on – like my shoes, my chiropody, or my car – then I wouldn’t be able to be everything that I am or do everything that I do.

So like I said, it’s delicate.

Forget your troubles, c’mon, get happy

26th Sep 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Love or hate it, I’m the type of person who can get very emotional about things. In fact, during a conversation with a good, but not super close friend a few months ago, she described me as a very ‘all or nothing-type person’ and although she wasn’t to know how much that small phrase would make me feel understood, it really hit home.

Over the last year, when I’ve been hyper-focused on my work and career, there have been numerous times when in the more quiet moments of my day I’ve sunk into feelings of loneliness and confusion. I’ve felt that because everything has been so go go go since I moved to London if I spend an afternoon doing absolutely nothing then I’m wasting time. And the guilt sinks in. So I get up and do something else. Or I start to criticise myself.

Plus, as is the case with every year, there have been times so far in 2023 when some really unpleasant things have happened in my life, and even though there has been plenty more good than bad, everybody knows that the effect of the bad things tends to stick around longer than the good. Then with my life consistently changing and by working in a space where I need to be conscious of what others think of me – rather than ignore it and #notcare – I’d started to feel like maybe I didn’t have such a solid sense of self as I’d once thought. I began to wonder what on earth I was doing, what I was supposed to be doing, how I’m meant to feel at this age, and why am I finding it so difficult to just relax?

And why do I now have these stretch marks everywhere when I haven’t grown since I was 17?

To remedy feeling lost and overwhelmed at times, I’m the kind of person who needs something to look forward to. A sense of direction. So I put a lot of my focus on the recent holiday I had with one of my best friends, where I went to America. We’d had such a brilliant time last year and felt so at home in the Big Apple, so surely going again will do the job to help me reset? And it did! But not in the way I’d originally wanted it to.

I found myself on the other side of the world, still waking up confused – sometimes kind of sad – and sitting in bars or restaurants waiting for something exciting to happen. Therefore, I put far too much pressure on situations to supply me with some kind of narrative I could use to entertain my friends to make my life sound fun and exciting; I lost sight of just having a nice time. I needed something fabulous and complicated to happen because for some reason my already fun and exciting life didn’t feel like enough.

To beat even less around the bush here, what I’d pinned a lot of my enjoyment in that trip on was receiving attention from men. One man in particular in one place – and I don’t mind typing this, because I’d eat my shoe before I believe that he’ll read this blog. Basically, to cut a long story short, last year I met somebody who I really liked and who really liked me but then I went home from holiday and that was that. It was the first time in a very long time that I’d actually felt excited about someone and even though I then dated someone else here in London who I also really liked months after meeting this man in America, the fact that the one in London didn’t work out and the trip back to the states was looming, reminded me of how exciting that first one had felt last year. And I’ve never done well with what ifs or maybes: I’m far too nosey.

It’s funny how the lacklustre nature of the dating game at the minute gets us so hung up on situations though. Because truly, I barely know this man. I met him for a short amount of time and whilst I will stand by the fact that that thing the movies, books, and songs talk about was definitely there in some capacity, we never had the chance to properly get to know each other. So who knows if that thing would’ve remained? Still, the what if stays in your memory and it’s pushed to the front of your brain when dating someone else who made you feel a similar way doesn’t work out, your work situation is too confusing and stressful to want to think about, and, would you look at that? You’re going right back to where you met him. But his experience of dating in the last year didn’t go the same way as mine; he met someone and it’s worked out. I wasn’t too upset about it (disappointed for selfish reasons, but no tears or anguish), however, it did make me reassess how I’ve been approaching aspects of my life recently.

I’ve focused so much on work for the last year, that I’d started to believe the only way I’ll achieve an emotional escape from its intensity and judgment is through being in a relationship. So dating has been a really important thing for me. If I wasn’t going on dates or talking to someone, then I was watching trash TV centered around relationships, keeping my head filled with an arsenal of reasons why I’m lonely and lacking because of not being in one.

Therefore, to cut out the opportunity for self-criticism and knocks to the self-esteem for a few months, I’m wholeheartedly not going anywhere near the dating world. At the minute, it either bores me or just makes me feel like sh*t, so I’d rather watch TV and colour in my colouring book. Maybe that’s lame, but I want more space in my head to be creative right now, and sitting around seeing if someone has replied to me on Hinge is not a vibe.

I don’t want to feel like I need to focus on a holiday to run away and find some interesting story to report back to the girls. Don’t get me wrong, long may the funny debriefs continue, but if I’m always searching for one then nothing will ever seem good enough. And where’s the fun in that?

A trustworthy queen

29th Aug 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Given that the main way I lure people to these blogs is through sharing the link on my social media pages – sometimes passive-aggressively, but always enthusiastically – then you’re likely to already know that last week marked a year since I moved down to London. A lot has changed in my life in a very short period of time, but the details of that aren’t what’s grabbed my attention over the last few days: I’ve been more interested in a pattern that appeared in the responses to that post.

In social situations and within popular culture, there’s always a lot of dialogue about romantic relationships and the ways in which they can affect a person’s state of mind or self-esteem. But when I was in the car with my friend the other day, speaking about how our individual self-esteems (not sure if that’s the grammatically correct way to put it, but stick with me) have been impacted by others, the conversation focused a lot on the friendships, rather than romantic relationships. Fair enough, I’m yet to have a ‘serious’ romantic relationship, but I’ve had enough run-ins to leave me feeling shitty at points and still, the hits to the confidence and sense of personal security which have lasted the longest have been thrown by close friends. Often, female friends.

My comfort zone has always been around groups of men because I’ve got three older brothers, I’m close with my Dad and my Granddad, and within my wider family, I only had male cousins until the age of eight. So, even though I was equally close to my Mum, Grandmas, and Aunties, what I’ve always known is for women to be the minority in social spaces. Therefore, when I went to school and made friends with groups of girls I lapped it up because it wasn’t what I was used to. However, there were also plenty of times when I didn’t understand the young girls around me. I would be in a tight-knit female friendship group one second, then the next somebody was chatting to other girls about me behind my back, I’d get upset, not know how to deal with it, and then go home crying to the comfort of mostly male voices and opinions.

My parents raised all of us to be feminists; to love and appreciate the beauty of femininity. I was encouraged to lean into my femininity as much as I wanted to, whilst also receiving a pretty honest education on the issues that being born a woman brings up when you enter the wider world. I’ve consistently tried to feel as comfortable around women as I do men, but when some of those female friendships have turned sour, I’ve been hurt far more deeply than I have by any of my male friends.

But this brings me to the Instagram post I made the other day about my achievements since moving down to London. I received loads of lovely messages of encouragement from friends and strangers, but what I didn’t expect to see was the number of women in my life who chose to publicly express their support of what I do. And then when I thought about the relationships I have with those women, I realised that for the first time (I think, ever), all of the friendships I have with women right now are honest and healthy. There’s not a single woman close to me whose friendship makes me feel insecure, judged, or observed.

Female friendships are so fulfilling, but the insidious nature of patriarchy means that often we go into social situations immediately skeptical of each other. We’re conditioned to judge, shame, distrust, and criticize so much that forming a friendship where you know that the woman sitting across from you won’t ever turn on you or say something foul behind your back isn’t easy. I don’t believe that the tendency towards suspicion is the fault of the women themselves, it’s just an effect of a misogynistic world, but nothing upsets me more than seeing women tearing each other down. You’re not going to like everyone, irrespective of their gender, but sexist acts towards women by women feel like a deeper kind of betrayal.

We’re all guilty of not being the nicest version of ourselves at times – everyone has bad days, and sometimes certain people just wind you up. However, as I grow into the version of myself I am now, I realise that I’ve not always felt that safe in my friendships and I’ve not known how to fix it. I might always be the one to walk toward the group of lads in the room because that’s how I first learned to socialise, but now I’m happy to write that I will no longer say that I prefer the company of men over women. Because once you crack that ‘how to find a female friendship free from (lots of ‘f’s) judgment and suspicion’, those relationships start to feel like the most important ones you’ll ever have.

Maybe I don’t mind these walls

22nd Aug 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I’ve always considered myself as one of those people who, as the saying goes, wears their heart on their sleeve. But after hearing people give me their opinions on how I present myself – be they colleagues, friends, or potential romantic partners – it’d appear that I’m full of sh*t. This entire time I’ve been sitting here thinking I’m constantly giving away too much of myself, only to be told by one of my oldest and closest friends that I’ve always struggled to be vulnerable. So what am I understanding vulnerability to mean then? Because clearly there’s a disconnect going on somewhere.

The aspect of my life that people have always expected to be incredibly sensitive for me, is my physical disability. Only, I don’t think that I’ve ever struggled to tell whoever’s asked whatever it was they wanted to know; yes, there have been times when I’ve tired of having to say the same thing multiple times in a day, but the ‘I’ve got Spina Bifida, I was born with it, it’s a disability of the spine’ speech doesn’t really tap into my emotions. The aspects of it that are difficult to talk about are more to do with my desire to feel that it, and therefore I, am understood by someone other than my parents. And the anxiety that this might not ever happen.

On the other hand, when I’ve sat with myself and thought about the most vulnerable parts of me, what jumps out is the devotion I give to the people in my life who are most important to me. I might not be the one who sits in the cinema crying at the bit you should definitely cry at, but I am the one to feel physically sick if I think that I’ve accidentally upset someone I love. It’s silly really, but I go into a blind panic; my stomach goes into my throat, my hands will start to shake, and this will all happen regardless of whether I believe that what I did was actually wrong.

Then there’s the other side to the vulnerability of a person which isn’t necessarily related to negative feelings. With new social circles, I do hold back the part of myself that’s gentle and silly and playful because ever since I went to university, I’ve felt a little apprehensive about acting the way I always would around my school friends or my brothers because I don’t want my actions to be misinterpreted or judged.

Honestly, I think I hold back these parts of my personality when I’m first getting to know people because I’m just trying to read the room I’m in before I do anything to expose myself. When I was younger I’d go into social situations without any barriers up, but when you grow up you begin to learn that by doing that, sometimes it leaves room for hurt. Here, I’m not talking about something as drastic as bullying or abuse, I mean you might do something as simple as make the wrong joke around the wrong people because you assumed that they’d have the same sense of humour as everyone you grew up around, then find yourself branded as overly sarcastic or negative, when you were only trying to make everyone laugh. Or you might give your time, energy, and advice to someone who then gives you nothing in return, leaving you feeling deflated and cast aside.

Therefore, I don’t think it’s natural, or particularly helpful to show these possibly more vulnerable parts of your personality to others so soon after meeting, because you haven’t given yourself time to work anyone out yet. However, I do accept that by struggling to fully let go – especially around potential romantic partners – I sometimes show people what I think they want me to be in a given moment, rather than what I actually am. But then, who doesn’t? Especially at this age.

In all the conversations I have about my blog, my disability, and my life, the main thing I try to get across is that I know I don’t do everything perfectly – including accepting myself. However, as much as I’m a total perfectionist, I know that I’m never going to be without faults when it comes to self-love, so all I’m actively trying to do is my best. Therefore, unfortunately, I won’t always be comfortable in my own skin, accepting and loving of my disability, or as silly as I am with my brothers. But! These multiple layers of vulnerability are what makes people so interesting, and you’ve just got to be invested enough in a person to wait for the different parts to show.

Because, as a great philosopher once said: ‘Ogres are a lot like onions’.

For one night only

15th Aug 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I’m a single woman. We all know this. If you read enough of my blogs then you also know that I’d probably rather not be this: I’ve no issue with being on my own, nor do I feel lacking in any value because of not being in a relationship, but forever being the third wheel or the raconteur of a tedious story has gotten old for me now. So, with this in mind, allow me to take up the next few minutes of your day by being a raconteur of another I’m-a-single-woman-get-me-out-of-here story.

A few weeks ago, I was out with a friend and we did what we always do when we go out together: we got silly. During the getting ready part of the process, we’d decided that that night was going to be one of those where we dressed unnecessarily spicy, drank cocktails and basically did a tour of all the bars in the area. Inevitably, this ended with her gushing to every gal in the toilet about her lovely boyfriend, and me flirting with someone in the smoking area, both of us with arms covered in stamps from the various clubs we’d marched into.

I’m not someone who gets with someone every single time I go out – and I’m defining ‘gets with’ here as meaning either kissing or sleeping with someone, or anything in between – because a lot of the time that’s not on my mind, or there’s nobody there that I’m attracted to. Nonetheless, I’ve still had my fair share of one-night stands. And to be honest, some of the mornings after have included shaming myself for sleeping with someone I met in a club because the patriarchy has a tendency to both, directly and indirectly, label me as a slut for doing so. I’m glad to say that I’ve since grown out of this, as it soon became clear that the dating scene really isn’t providing the goods and my libido still requires as much respect and attention as the men around me are allowed to give their own.

However, there’s really nothing worse than ending a fun night out in bed with a stranger and disappointing sex. Going home with someone you just met is obviously always a bit of a gamble anyway when it comes to having enjoyable sex, but my friends and I have been mentioning a recurring theme that requires some immediate attention.

The stereotype tends to be that men enjoy sex more than women, that women need an emotional connection with the person they’re sleeping with to enjoy it at all, and that generally, women are far more likely to become emotionally attached to a man after sleeping with him. All bullshit. Not specific to any gender, not true; all dangerous assumptions that contribute to it feeling acceptable for women to leave sexual experiences disappointed with the men sitting pretty because they got what they wanted.

I’m a huge believer in the possibility of sex being fun regardless of the emotional connection between the people having it. Obviously, if you’re in love then sleeping together is undoubtedly going to mean more, you’ll know each other’s bodies better, etc, etc. But that doesn’t then also mean that a one-night stand is always going to be terrible; it just depends on how you’re approaching it. For example, you meet in the smoking area of a bar, and you have a very mutual flirt where both of you are putting equal amounts of effort in. You get along – possibly superficially at this point because you think he’s hot, but it still counts – and you enjoy the chat so much you think yes, let’s continue this somewhere else. The whole time this has been a mutual interaction. So why then when my friends and I tell each other these stories, are we each so excited about times when lads have continued this mutual display of effort into the actual sex?

The level of energy you’ll see in a woman’s face when she says she actually enjoyed the one-night stand isn’t really one I can describe, but if you’ve seen it, then you’ll know that there’s pretty much always an air of surprise accompanying it.

The fact is, sex is only ever going to be fun if we’re both involved – or if everyone is involved, I’m not going to make assumptions about what you’re into here. Putting effort into it doesn’t equate to emotional attachment, it just means you’re showing the person you’ve gone home with the respect that they deserve. After all, they’re not there just to service your needs and if you’re not going to give them the correct energy, then they could’ve gone home and had a more fulfilling time with themself.

Where I’m at now, I’m not interested in one-night stands. Odds are it’d be a let-down, so I’d rather dance with the girls, maybe kiss a stranger if his moves are good enough, then wake up in the middle of my own bed. No shame if casual sex is your bag at the minute, just make sure the person(/people) you’re with is giving as much as they’re taking. It’ll be more fun that way.

Hot (and slightly insecure) girl summer

8th Aug 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 3 Comments

I do my best to love my body for what it is – ‘flaws’ and all – as everyone should. But unfortunately, in my humanity, I have plenty of times when I’d prefer certain parts of myself to look a little different. For example, ever since my videos have taken to gaining thousands of views in a matter of hours, I’ve all of a sudden become slightly self-conscious of my teeth. Which is new.

If I’ve mentioned this and my newfound decision to get them straightened as soon as I can to my friends, then everyone immediately says there’s nothing wrong with my teeth – some even panic a little at the idea that I might lose my fangs through any sort of correction. Clearly, to others, what I’m judging as imperfect, is a part of myself that they see as showing who I am and it irks them that I might want to get rid of it. (Although, realistically there’s no need to panic because nobody is ripping out the fangs: long live.)

Last week I came back from spending some time with my parents, who now live in Rio de Janeiro – I’m aware that that’s a bit of a silly sentence but allow it – and whilst they were both at work, I went to sit on the beach every day. Sitting on a public beach is a genuinely fascinating experience. It’s truly one of the only places and situations where everyone puts themselves in a vulnerable position by wearing so little clothing that if they’ve got any insecurities about their bodies, then there are very few ways to hide them from view. For a few hours a day, everybody just gives in; they might be stressing about how they look in their heads, but nobody else can hear that internal monologue of insecurity. It’s lovely.

To keep things frank – as I try to do – I love wearing a bikini. Generally, I love the way I look even though there are many aspects of me that don’t match that ideal body type for a woman – given that that’s a totally fictional concept anyway. This being said however, I do try to hide taking my callipers on or off. And some days I had to psyche myself up to walk down to the sea, because I knew some people might spot my feet curve as I walked without the support of my shoes on uneven ground. Plus, I was on my own so didn’t have that comfort blanket of being next to someone who you know loves and accepts you. As a result, there was one day I actually sat for 30 minutes motivating myself to just stand up and walk 10 feet toward the sea.

What’s funny, is when I was encouraging myself to do this, I just kept thinking the words ‘nobody cares Betty, nobody is watching. But if they are, they’re as likely to be looking at your arse as they are your feet.’. I might not love what the lump just above my bum looks like, but I’m not ashamed or shy to say that the bum itself is great. So as I felt the insecurity start to flood into me, I (in a way) bullied confidence back into myself. It might not be the ‘healthy’ way to do it, but I made it into the sea.

I’m in a weird moment with my body right now. Some days I love her, other days I’m not so sure because I’m getting older and she’s changing, so there are new curves and lines to get used to. She gets her foot randomly infected at times, her legs don’t walk so straight, and she seems to have a tendency towards developing bruises or strains in areas that make very little sense, but to give her credit, she heals. And I’ve not fully worked out how to look after her properly yet. I like her though – I do mean that.

This metaphorical road to unconditional self-acceptance we’re all told we should tread, from what I’ve seen, is a pretty lifelong and tumultuous endeavour. No matter your confidence levels on one day or as shown on your social media, every single person on this planet will have minutes, hours, days, or weeks where they struggle to love what’s looking back at them in the mirror. Especially in clothing shop changing rooms because good god the lighting in there does NOTHING for anyone. Still, if I’ve learned anything from the motivational speeches given to me by the drunken middle-aged Yorkshire women in the smoking area of pubs and bars, criticizing every aspect of your physical image is a waste of time, and when you get older you’ll be wishing that the kids don’t do as much of it as you did at their age.

Patriarchal pressures and judgments of female (and male) bodies are very real and very piercing, but we can make the decision to shut ourselves up every now and then to ease the headache. And do NOT, EVER, comment on someone’s body whilst they’re on the beach because that should be a safe space where everyone’s physical, and therefore emotional, vulnerability is respected.

Well now I feel guilty

24th Jul 202325th Jul 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

The other week I posted a video on TikTok which has since received over a million views, tens of thousands of likes, and hundreds of comments – not all of them kind. In the video, I described a very wholesome encounter I’d had with a train conductor where when I’d asked him for help with finding a seat (because a spontaneous reduction of carriages on the train had made all seat reservations disappear), he’d not only sorted me out, but he did it in a way which included asking if I was comfortable with every action he took. For example, before he announced to everyone that I was disabled so please could somebody give me their seat, he asked if I was okay with him doing that first. Every part of me screamed ‘no no no no no, I hate you telling these strangers that I’m disabled’, but I needed to sit down, so I bit the inside of my cheek and I said ‘sure, that’s fine, thank you’.

A couple of the comments on this video were questioning how it makes sense for me to say that I hate bringing my disability up to strangers when I talk about it so openly on my social media and within this blog. At first glance, it might look like they’re giving me a tasty bit of hate on a random Tuesday afternoon – and that may well have been the intention – however, I do think they pose a fair question.

My relationship with my disability is complicated: it has always been complicated, and it will probably continue to be that way. I’ve told you before about how I struggle with the notion of being proud of my disability, but also how I’ve no problem with answering a stranger’s questions as long as they’ve said it in a way that doesn’t include the phrase ‘what’s wrong with you?’. I know what I am and I know that that includes Spina Bifida, and yet, I will rarely (if ever) ask a person to stand up on a bus or a train to let me sit down. I’d rather sit on the floor, or just ignore the soreness spreading in my knees as I stand. And I’ll rarely ever use the disabled toilet because I don’t see myself as requiring it. Even though sometimes that queue in a nightclub has me standing for far longer than I should.

This being said, I am learning to change my behaviour by trying to accept that there’s nothing wrong with me asking for help if I need it. Even writing that sentence, I know that people will jump straight to outrage that I even consider it a big deal at all, but I can’t explain to you how much I’ve been conditioned by the world as a young disabled woman to shut up and get on with things: to not complain, to not ask for help on the off chance that that request will leave me being dependent on others.

I’ve seen eyes roll when I’ve gently moved to the subject of changing a plan to help my feet; I’ve seen people close to me at the time try to find any excuse to do things the way they normally would had I not been there, and those moments have hurt. A trope associated with the life of a disabled person is that their medical issues cause those around them to change everything to cater to their needs; everyone close becomes a carer and the person with the disability, a burden. It’s an untrue, unfair, and immensely damaging idea that I have vehemently fought against as long as I can remember, but this has led me to feel tangible guilt for asking people to help me out on occasion.

So I can write blogs like this one and make silly videos where I talk about my Spina Bifida because your engagement with them is entirely up to you. But if I have to look someone in the eye – and they’re not my family or my closest friends – and ask them to walk slower, tell me the walking distances from this place to the next, or to please give me their seat, I feel the tears start to come and the embarrassment fills me. I know I need it to take care of myself, but I don’t want to ask you to do anything you wouldn’t normally do. It doesn’t feel fair. I don’t want it to seem like I can’t take care of myself, I don’t want you to think less of me, and I don’t want to make you feel guilted into doing something you don’t want to do. However, as another commenter said (beautifully, I’d like to add): ‘that’s not charity, that’s society’.

Away from my emotional reactions, I know that my guilt isn’t warranted, given that I don’t tend to be asking for much in these situations. So, I can’t promise you that I’ll never feel the guilt – I think part of me is just built that way – but I do try to not let it stop me from asking for help quite so often.

What’s the rush?

18th Jul 202318th Jul 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago, I don’t know what it was, but it seemed like everyone around me was just having a sh*t time of it. The sun had started to come out and we were all looking to plans of traveling, but in those lucid moments in between work days and going to sleep, so many of my friends were telling me that they felt completely lost.

For me, I was struggling with feeling really lonely romantically: I’d seen two of my closest friends starting to develop feelings for lads, causing me to look at where I was with that kind of thing, only to see a tumbleweed go across my phone screen. And as I’ve explained before, when I’m feeling lonely I do tend to feel it quite strongly; listening to sad songs whilst I drive from one job to the next. But then, I’ve also not grown up being allowed to wallow for too long – this does sometimes mean I’m not great at allowing myself to sit in my sadness, which isn’t always healthy, but then it also leads me to find solutions – so I decided that if I was going to feel lonely because I’m not texting anyone, then I should probably reply to somebody on Hinge…Since, you know, you’ve kind of got to talk to someone to have someone talk to you.

Then I dated a fit man for a month, so go figure. Obviously, given that I’m still single, it didn’t end in the preferred way but hey, everything’s a learning curve.

My friends and I weren’t just feeling like sh*t because the dating scene is a mess though. It seemed like all of us were re-evaluating every aspect of our lives – especially our careers – and each of us was just totally overwhelmed by the amount we felt we had to do and the fear that we weren’t where we were ‘supposed’ to be. Even though, this notion of ‘supposed’ never makes much sense if you deep it anyway, because who’s this big eye in the sky deciding what position my life should’ve reached by June 2023? And why’s it so bothered?

There is no correct way to do life, and not one of us will have the same life or career trajectory as the other, but we’re putting so much pressure on ourselves to reach a version of success that we couldn’t even describe if somebody asked us. This goes back to those booklets we had to fill out at school though, where we decided where we’d be at every age until we retired. Except, those booklets always failed to include the idea that that’s not how life works – for example, I don’t remember seeing ‘global pandemic’ in bold across 2019-2021 – or the fact that there’s actually no need for you to decide everything all at once. Therefore, I’m trying my best to remind myself of this every time I feel like I’m drowning in to-do lists and self-criticism.

I asked my housemate what she does when she’s in a rut and she said that she calls her parents. I do the same. So I’d like to take a moment to say that just because you’re an independent adult in most aspects of your life, if you feel like you need your Mum or Dad, then your age doesn’t matter. Sometimes their advice, or the act of having a conversation with them, is what you need. It doesn’t mean that you can’t function at all as an adult. That being said, if you still don’t know how to do your own laundry or how to cook a meal…then you should probably give that some immediate attention…just saying.

When I feel naff, I try to make time for the things I know will make me happy, like going to see some live music with a friend, or sitting next to a river in the middle of nowhere for an hour to read a book, or sparking a silly conversation on the family group chat. Anything to give me the dopamine boost I need to regroup and work the bigger things out in a calmer mindset. So, without meaning to sound like a guru here, if you’re feeling like how I described my own mindset last month as you read this, then try to think of what might get you back on track.

Because sometimes it feels like we’re all rushing around, and there’s no need to be so frantic.

Too much what?

7th Jul 202311th Jul 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 1 Comment

I didn’t realise I was so awful to be around. Didn’t know that it was such a chore to speak to me. Well, if I’m so annoying and intense, then just tell me that, nobody forced him to spend time with me.

Unfortunately, these are all things I’ve said to my friends in the last few months because I felt stung by tedious ends to the few romantic situations I had been bothered to give my time to. And I’ve wondered recently whether I should be so frank on this blog about what’s going on in my life, for fear that it might turn future partners off, but then I recalibrate and I think, well I’ve tried numerous methods when it’s come to my approach with lads and it doesn’t seem to matter how cool I play it: if they’re going to do something annoying, then that’s inevitable.

Plus, most situations blur so much into one – whether they be relating to me or my friends – that it’d be difficult to tell who I’m talking about anyway. Dating at the minute feels so lame that I don’t need to be explicit with details to make it relatable.

I’ve been told by multiple lads, in different ways, that I’m too much. Some have literally said those words to me, whilst others have hinted but no matter the method, I heard them loud and clear. It hurt me for a while, I won’t lie, and I tried to hold myself back in situations by talking less or giving less of my personality to the moment for fear that my confidence, outspokenness, or lack of insecurity in showing my interest in a person might come off as ‘too much’. I’ve spent hours talking to my friends, stressing about whether I look crazy, simply because I want to see the guy I’m dating or I want to ask him what’s going on. After all, god forbid a woman be put under the ‘crazy’ umbrella.

When I wonder if I’m crazy, often all I’m doing is texting the person I’m interested in to ask to do something or to try to make them laugh. I’ve got no anxiety about saying what’s on my mind and I don’t care enough about the games (nor do I have the patience) to play them. If I’m interested, then I’m straight up about it; I’m not getting down on one knee or blowing up someone’s phone with a million texts or calls, but I’m clear. If I like a person then I want to do spontaneous fun sh*t; I want to hang out, go for a drive, cook food, find a cool exhibition, or go have some drinks at a place where we can play arcade games. I hold back my feelings for a while, and I don’t trust for a hot minute, but I don’t enjoy the dynamic where someone is chasing somebody else. It feels pointless to me.

So I have come to accept that maybe I am a lot to handle – as these young men have told me. I’ve got a big personality, I can be forward, and I’m very ready to give my all to a person if after we’ve spent time together I judge them to be worth it. But I’m tired of stressing about whether I’m ‘crazy’ just because I’m being myself, and it disappoints me to hear so many of my female peers saying the same thing about their dating experiences.

I’ve felt like recently, every time I date a lad, the second I start to ‘let my guard down’ and show myself as a person with complicated emotions, opinions, ambition, ideas, and imagination, that’s when I’m too much. Before then, when I’d shown my quieter side by listening to the person across from me and investing time in their lives, thoughts, and feelings, I was easier to handle. I was a face they liked to look at, a nice person to make them feel good about themselves, and someone they might want to sleep with. But when I began to want the person to get to know me, I’ve been told that I’m falling in love with them too much so they’re going to have to step away. Only, I don’t remember knowing them well enough to make that decision about my feelings.

I don’t like someone else thinking they know me or how I feel before they’ve taken the time to notice me as a person. One man, a few months ago, showed this so beautifully when after a month of properly dating each other he called me Beth. He’d spent hours and hours with me, slept in a bed with me, and spouted all the things about me he liked, only to get my name wrong as he told me he knew I could fall in love with him, but that he couldn’t with me. You know me so well you know my feelings, but you don’t know my name?

You have to laugh.

I’m a good person, I’d make a great partner, and I deserve to be shown the same respect I show these men. It’s not about having bad taste because my experiences aren’t unusual for the dating world at the minute – in fact, some have had much worse. And I’m sorry, but we can’t all have bad taste.

I don’t have a solution, I just keep moving and reminding myself that my friends and family think I’m great, so I can’t be that jarring to be around.

They ain’t all bad

4th Jul 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I’ve written before about how people stare at my shoes and how the image of them can sometimes complicate my relationships with others, and though everything I’ve said on this topic so far is still valid and based on true events, I do acknowledge that sometimes, in the moment, individuals are reacting to how I’ve presented my disability rather than acting on deep-seated social preconceptions. But that was a lot of words in one sentence, so I’ll try to explain myself more clearly. Using more words…in separate sentences this time though. 🙂

Growing up, I don’t remember ever feeling hugely different from my peers. Yes, I was in a wheelchair for stretches of time because of my operations, blisters, and occasional infections, so I knew that there was a physical difference between me and the other 6-year-olds, but I don’t think that I ever had a complex about it. There were moments when I was sad because all the other girls had the Polly Pockets in their shoes, or those glittery gel heels you could get from Claire’s, and I was stuck with these leather boots, but then I was also the only kid who could wear coloured shoes to school, so you know, swings and roundabouts.

Plus, I was never bullied for my disability, so I didn’t grow up knowing what it was like for my body to be publicly ridiculed by my peers – something which is unfortunately not a given for disabled kids. So this, along with my parents’ insistence that I always felt equal to my older brothers (and thus, them all being absolute feminist icons) meant that I grew up knowing I was different, but that that wasn’t a big deal. However, then you become a teenager and later an adult, and the world isn’t quite so consistently kind…

I’ve learnt a lot about my disability in the last couple of years alone, but possibly the most important lesson has been that if I step into a social situation like I did when I was 6, thinking that my Spina Bifida is (at best) only slightly relevant to the moment, then people are unlikely to make it a big deal. My 6-year-old self wasn’t bothered about the metal bars on her boots because that’s just what she had to wear, and why would anyone want to talk about shoes now anyway? Let’s go climb that tree! (Counterproductive for the shoes and Spina Bifida, but anyways…).

I went to Prague with one of my best friends last weekend and whilst I was there I tried to channel this 6-year-old point of view. I stopped myself from giving in to the feeling of embarrassment that comes with asking strangers to adjust to my disability, and I just asked how far the club was from the bar. It might sound trivial to you, but even something as simple as asking people to give me an exact walking distance is stressful to bring up when you don’t know what response you’re going to get. I didn’t stop there though. Oh no, she took it to another level, and she wore a short dress which put the callipers on show to the club – something I was never phased about doing before university made me insecure.

I’d be lying if I said that these were easy things to do because they weren’t and frankly, they were only really achievable because I had one of my girls next to me to tell me to stop being silly and wear the damn dress. But once I started approaching the social situations like yes this is just how it is, the people around me took it in their stride as much as when I suggested we do another shot of tequila. Just like when I was 6 in my Cinderella dress walking around Asda, what I had on my feet wasn’t a big deal. Or at least, not to me or to anyone who mattered in that moment.

It’s about balance, though. I can’t be like I was when I was 6 and not care about my Spina Bifida at all because I don’t have two parents and three brothers (and the rest of my familial army) ready to pick me up when I land myself in a wheelchair from climbing trees or hiking up hills. They’re still there, but not quite as close. Plus, society is pretty rubbish in its treatment and perception of disability, and my brain is so much more switched on to that than when I was a little girl. But there is something to be said for not assuming that everyone is going to be lame about it: I went on nights out with random people in Prague, we all got drunk together, we had a great time, and if I asked to sit down for a sec to rest my legs, nobody batted an eyelid. In fact, the lads with the egos were more than happy to prove that they could piggyback me down the street. No medical records explanation was necessary.

An Indelible Friend

Author: elizabethmdouglas