Ch ch ch changes

22nd Feb 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 2 Comments

If I’m trying to be my most pragmatic, sensible self, then I’d like to say that I’m not at all scared of change; in fact, I welcome all of the exciting new things that can come with switching things up. Buuuuuuutttttt, change isn’t always positive, nor are the outcomes ever fixed, so I think it’s better to explain how I’m experiencing change at the minute as it being like I’m sitting on a see-saw: one end has an overwhelming sense of excitement, whilst the other has an equally overwhelming feeling of terror. Which way it leans really depends on the day.

At the very start of this year, I’m not going to lie to you, sitting in a hospital gown with a cannula in my left arm had me leaning all the way over to terror, whereas, when I heard that I’d been given two Christmas shows on BBC Radio 1, you’d best believe the see-saw was so far towards excitement that it looked more like a slide. Then we were feeling a mixture of both when it came to coming back to London after my operation because I’m still having to bandage my foot every day but at least I’m back in the groove of pursuing a radio career. Oh, and I’m not sure if I mentioned it, but I now have parents who live in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil! You know…that really standard change for parents to make to their lives once all of their children have moved out? – I’m completely supportive and excited about that one, but it’d be silly to not include that in the paragraph listing the biggest changes in my life recently.

So then, if you’re an emotional stress head with control freak tendencies like me, how do you cope with so much change in such a short period of time?

Well, it’s definitely made easier by the fact that I’m a cup-half-full kind of a gal, so I do naturally move towards finding the positives in a situation. But I think that the main way I’m dealing with it is by viewing every recent change positively – even the traumatic emergency operation at the start of the year. At the time, I was terrified that my Spina Bifida was about to strip me of my independence just when I needed to be out there grafting for a radio career; that I was going to be sitting in my room alone, resenting my own body as I had to wait around for it to heal. And yes, we’re still not healed, we’re still bandaging every day, but by speaking openly about the operation, and by reframing the whole thing in my head as an accidental injury like a sprained ankle or broken arm, I feel so much less stressed about my foot than I have for a very long time. Furthermore, I’ve now experienced an operation in my adult life, so if something like that happens again, then it won’t be such a nasty shock to the system because at least I’ll remember what the process feels like.

This trust that I can continue to be independent whilst having problems with my feet and living in a city as big as London, also allowed me to only be happy for my parents when they made their move, rather than feeling like I was losing my biggest support network to South America. The fact is, that when you’ve had a physical disability since birth, there’s a period in your late teens and then early twenties where you have to inherit that disability from your parents because even though the Spina Bifida has always belonged to my body, the practicality of dealing with it didn’t really lie with me until I moved out, and even then, it’ll take years before I know all the details of my Spina Bifida the way my parents do. For example, the whole operation thing: I hadn’t done that since I was seven years old, so even though I’m a strong, articulate, independent 23-year-old woman, I had to call my Mum and Dad to ask them the answers to the questions the doctors were asking me about my own body. I have the scars, but I don’t know the technicalities behind why a doctor cut me there.

A lot is changing in my life right now, and in some contexts, I don’t entirely recognise myself. I don’t mean that in a bad way – in fact, I feel far more settled and happier now than I did in my final year of university – it’s just that there’s a lot going on and it sometimes takes my brain a second to keep up. Surrendering to a situation and not focusing on controlling things doesn’t come naturally to me, but coping with change becomes much easier if I do that, thus, going with the flow is the motto right now.

Loosey goosey bby, looOooOooseyy goOoseeyy.

No likey, no lighty

30th Jan 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

When it comes to romantic relationships, I’ve always felt so sure of what I wanted in a partner. Granted, I’ve gone to and fro when it comes to the importance of each attribute depending on how old I was, where I was living, and what I was doing, but overall, since the age of about 16 I’ve felt certain that I knew exactly what I wanted when it came to romance. But, then I actually started going on dates.

My first ever date was a few months ago and when I tell you that I came away from that date feeling so overwhelmed and confused that I was physically shaking a little, that would not be an exaggeration. Honestly felt like I’d lost my virginity again, it was so intense.

Don’t worry, nothing bad happened on the date to make me so shaken – if anything, the lad was a little too into me, what with trying to kiss me 30 minutes in and talking about taking me to meet his parents shortly after that. Bit heavy. Though on some level, I didn’t really mind him being like that; the thing which threw me for a loop so much was the fact that he was being so publicly affectionate with me and saying all these things without having a milliliter of alcohol in his system and we were in broad daylight. Because when I then sat down to think about it later, I realised that the last time I got close to a lad like that was when I was 17. I’d become so painfully used to boys telling me that they were into me once it’d gotten dark, or once they were a bit drunk, or whilst they already had a girlfriend, or once they thought that they might get the chance to sleep with me, (or a combination of all four of those things), that the idea that somebody might want to kiss me at 12pm on a Tuesday afternoon after getting some lunch in town, then walk down the street holding my hand genuinely freaked me out. Which isn’t great, is it?

My first date didn’t end up amounting to much, however, because I soon got the impression that this lad wasn’t actually interested in getting to know me; he wanted to be in a relationship, but he wasn’t too bothered about being in a relationship with someone if you get what I mean. It didn’t end with any sort of animosity, it was just clear that I didn’t want what he was going for so I politely (and swiftly) called it off.

Then I thought hey, plenty of my friends keep telling me how they’ve had a great time on dates with people they met on Hinge, so let’s stop overthinking it and go on a Hinge date. This one was definitely better – significantly less intense and we had a very lovely time – he was a few years older than me, we went for food after I finished work, and I came away from it feeling pretty good. But as much as I had a really great time, I still wasn’t sure whether I liked him in that way.

I did that internal monologue where you think ‘well, we had a nice time, we’ve got quite a lot in common, he asked questions, I asked questions, he made me feel comfortable, he openly expressed interest in me, he’s a good looking lad, there’s absolutely no reason why I shouldn’t see him again. But I wouldn’t be too fussed if he didn’t text me. If I wouldn’t be bothered though, then does that mean that I’m not attracted to him? How could I know that from spending two hours with a stranger? I didn’t feel as physically attracted to him as I’ve felt to men before. But was it just lust with the times before? Would it be healthier for me to wait and see? He was really nice…’. (Also, he’s an acrobat and that sounded like a lot of fun ygm hey heyyy)

He didn’t text me anyway though (and I didn’t text him), so all that mental energy was a little wasted lol. But to be fair, now that almost two months have passed since that date, I know that I wasn’t into him – not really – I was just trying to second guess whether I’d be sabotaging myself by calling something off with a nice man, simply because I wasn’t head over heels after two hours of conversation.

But now that I’ve told you these tales about my first dates, let’s circle back to the first couple of paragraphs of this blog and ask: what is it that you look for in a romantic partner Betty? Well, stranger, for the very first time I can confidently say that I’ve got absolutely no idea, and yet, (also) for the first time, I’m actually not that bothered. Don’t get me wrong, it’d be nice to be in a relationship with someone and I think that I’m way overdue experiencing that part of life, but I’m now in the position where I don’t want to overthink all the details and create a narrative in my head that doesn’t exist so I end up disappointed when something that was never going to happen anyway doesn’t happen. It takes up too much mental space and it forces me to feel lonely when I’ve no reason to.

Broadly speaking, I want someone who truly knows and is interested in me – intellectually, physically, emotionally – and visa versa, but I’ve got no clue of what that looks like in reality. So, I guess mystery man will just have to show me once he finally decides to show up, ey? I’m not bothered unless he’s worth it though…no pressure then.

I was a Christmas Presenter on BBC Radio 1!

17th Jan 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Before my foot decided to throw one of the most dramatic tantrums I’ve ever seen and land me in the hospital, I had the absolute joy of presenting not one, but TWO live shows on BBC Radio 1, as part of the Christmas presenter takeover. But what I realise, is that for those who don’t want to be radio presenters – so, the majority of the population – it was a bit of a shock to see me graduate from Durham University in June, move to London in August, and then end up presenting on BBC Radio 1 by the end of December. So, let me explain a little of how that happened – although, even with the explanation, the fact that it happened is still pretty ludicrous, but I’ll give you the context anyway! 🙂

I’m not one of those people who has always known exactly what they wanted to do. As a child, I went through the motions of wanting to be a Disney princess one day, an architect or archaeologist the next, a singer on X-Factor some mornings, and then there was that time when I really wanted to be a waitress. Even though I can’t stand for long or walk long distances. We can put that one down to wishful thinking. More than anything, my priority was always to end up in a job that I enjoyed; I didn’t want my disability to force me into something boring, simply because it’d mean that I could sit down all the time. Even when I was at university and I was telling people that I wanted to be a translator working within the music industry, I didn’t really know that that was what I wanted to do, nor did I have any clue whether that job existed in the first place – I just thought the idea sounded pretty cool, and I guess it gave me something to say whenever a relative posed the question.

Whilst studying at Durham University, I took up student radio. I had my own show in my first year, where I sat for an hour and played my favourite songs whilst some of my mates back at college would occasionally tune in. I interviewed a few student artists and then got involved with a group of students who were trying to organise a music festival – though the festival, unfortunately, was one of the many casualties of COVID: R.I.P.

I loved having these little projects, but they definitely weren’t my priority; it was only in my second year that I started to think of maybe pursuing a career in radio. During the third (?), maybe second (?), lockdown, one of the only things that I was able to do was student radio because we could all broadcast our shows from our bedrooms. So, I took it upon myself to start emailing some of my favourite musicians and ask them whether they fancied doing a zoom interview for the radio. Naturally, I talked the station up in the hopes of getting some responses, but I didn’t expect to talk my way into interviews with musicians from across the UK, the USA, Australia, and that random lad I spoke to who’s from Sweden. (He was stunning by the way; it took me a hot minute to recover from that Facetime). And so it was these interviews, as well as my spontaneous attendance at the Student Radio Conference in April of last year, which led me to decide that I actually might give this radio presenter thing a go.

Since making that decision less than 12 months ago, I’ve worked incredibly hard to get into the radio and broadcasting industry, but if I’m honest with you, the graft really hasn’t felt like work to me. Of course, there have been moments over the past five months since I moved to London when I’ve been totally burnt out and exhausted (*cough* ended up in hospital needing an operation *cough*), but that’s been because getting into an industry like this one rarely happens overnight, so I have to work a million jobs and be in a million places all the time so I can make my rent, and also say yes to as many opportunities as possible in order to get myself where I want to be. Therefore, the part-time jobs definitely felt like work, but every time I did a shift at a radio station or made a demo, it was so much fun that I would’ve sat and done it for hours. In fact, there have been plenty of times when I’ve done exactly that.

Everything I’ve said so far has hopefully shown you that I am totally in love with this profession, but I’d be lying if I said that I don’t have to take my disability into consideration when thinking about a career. So, I can’t tell you how much of a relief it’s been to me (and probably my parents) that I’ve managed to fall in love with a job that allows me to take care of my feet, without being made to feel like I’ve compromised myself to put my disability first – especially given that the working world is so disgustingly inaccessible, that it was never inevitable that I was going to be able to get the best of both worlds like that. But hey, I managed it! (Coincidentally!)

And yet, just because I secured my place in the BBC Christmas takeover, this doesn’t mean that I’m now definitely going to be a radio presenter full-time; there’s still plenty of grafting and networking and emailing still to be done. Nonetheless, I’m very aware of how lucky I am to only be 23 and to have found a profession that I can and want to pursue, and I’d like to think that it’s only a matter of time before I get to have my name permanently on a schedule.

It can be tricky to choose the thing that you love over the simplest route; a lot of the time there’s no guarantee that it’ll work out, and there are a lot of people in this world who don’t have (or think that they don’t have) the ability to take that kind of risk. But if you have the space to try, then I’m going to go all motivational speaker now and tell you that you shouldn’t let fear stop you. I don’t know if this radio career thing is going to work out for me any time soon, or at all, but if it doesn’t, then at least I know that it wasn’t for lack of effort.

Kicking off the New Year with a BANG

3rd Jan 20233rd Jan 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I was going to write my first blog of the year about being a Christmas presenter on BBC Radio 1, but I’m currently sitting in a hospital bed with a cannula in my left arm, and a hefty bandage on my foot. So…as much as being a Christmas presenter was an absolute adrenaline rush, and proof that that’s exactly what I want to do for many years to come, let’s talk about why I’m in the hospital gown first.

I put a lot of time, energy and effort every day into not letting my disability stop me from doing whatever I want to do. I monitor my condition the way I’ve been taught how, I’m careful, but mostly, I just don’t focus on it because it’s not the only thing that I am. But an unhelpful consequence of that is that sometimes my ability to get on with it means that people forget I’m disabled at all, or they at least assume that it really can’t be that bad. (I think I even convince myself of both of those things too on occasion…) The reality though, is that the condition of my feet can turn literally overnight – as it did on Saturday.

I’d had a teeny tiny bit of bleeding from my foot on Boxing Day, for absolutely no reason, but I was due to do my first Radio 1 show that morning so I bandaged it and refused to let it ruin my day. Then it didn’t bleed anymore for the next couple of days so I forgot about it. I was exhausted from working all the time, and the excitement of my radio shows, so I got the flu on Wednesday. I went to work Saturday night, had already checked my foot before my shift – it was fine – but then throughout the shift I started to feel really sick. Like, I fully thought I was going to pass out on multiple occasions. In the back of my head, I knew that the way I was feeling was how I’d felt when I’d had quite serious infections in my foot which had spread all the way up to the top of my leg, but that didn’t make any sense because I’d checked my foot three hours ago and it hadn’t even been a little bit red. (Mostly, I was willing what I knew to be true to not be.) So, I do the 8-hour shift, feel progressively worse, get home, boom: swollen and infected foot, cry myself to sleep, A&E the next morning, get told I need an operation to remove the infection, here we are day three in the hospital with antibiotics being pumped into my arm.

I’ve had operations before – six of them to be precise – but the only thing is, I don’t really remember them. The last one I’d had before yesterday morning’s was when I was seven years old, so yes, I’ve done this before, but also not really. What’s more, is yes, I’ve been in hospitals plenty and I’m no stranger to the A&E department or an infected foot, however, that doesn’t mean that I’m not frightened every time it happens. I mean, when I saw the state of my foot after my shift on New Year’s Eve, I literally said the words ‘I’m scared’ to my empty room in between my sobs before I fell asleep.

What’s strange, is that when I was little and I had my operations, I remember nurses and doctors telling me that I was ‘so brave’ even when I had tears streaming down my face. But I can tell you right now, yesterday morning when I felt the nurse wiping my tears as the anasthetic forced me to sleep, I didn’t feel very brave at all. Quite the opposite. And I think that the main problem I have with that word, is that it seems to imply some sort of choice, when the truth is that sometimes my foot just throws me to the bottom of a black pit, then terrifies and tortures me for a while. But the worst part is always that there’s no point in fighting; I have to voluntarily give in to everything that I hate, and I feel weak and small and none of it ever seems fair.

However, this time around I’ve made a point of silencing the voice in my head which tells me that I shouldn’t make a fuss, or complain, and I’ve told people what’s going on so that they can then support me. It’s not easy to do, because I think part of me assumes that sharing this intensely vulnerable part of my life will make people forget everything else they know about me and only see my disability, or they’ll think that I’m just being attention-seeking. Nonetheless, this Spina Bifida sh*t can be truly awful sometimes, and if I have to do it on my own I’ll crumble, so it might sound obvious, but it’s been a huge relief to see that if I actually tell people what’s going on, then I’ll get all the support I need. Plus, as traumatic as it is to be the one to live through it, it’s kind of nice to show people that I’m not exagerrating when I tell them that it can get bad – first-hand experience always comes in handy when you then ask friends about walking distances on a night out, for example.

So yes, hospital has not been fun lol. But I’ve done the operation, deep breaths have been taken, Disney films have been watched and plenty of love has been felt. Now let’s just round up the whole shebang by getting the bloody cannula out and my foot all healed so I can have some fun in 2023, shall we?

What do you mean you can’t feel it?

28th Nov 202228th Nov 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 1 Comment

When we think about physical disability, a lot of the time many of us conjure the mental image of a severely physically disabled person who’s permanently confined to a wheelchair, miserable, and in serious need of society’s help. And if you’ve read enough of my blogs, then hopefully you’ll understand why this way of thinking is immensely damaging to literally everyone – regardless of whether you’re disabled or not. But today, the assumption about disability that I want to focus on is the one we make about the relationship between physical disability and pain.

A lot of the time, whether we’re watching an episode of DIY SOS, or Children in Need, or Me Before You, many of us assume that if a person has mild to severe physical ailments, then they’re probably in a lot of pain because of it. You hear that I’ve got Spina Bifida, you see me walking down the street wearing callipers, or getting out of a car after putting a disabled badge on display, and you figure that I probably have to take medication and I experience pain in my feet. (Obviously, you might not think about it at all, but if you are thinking about it, then this is often where the brain goes). It’s not an unfair assumption, and I’m not offended whenever people ask me whether I’m in pain, but it always makes for a fun back-and-forth when I then say that actually, one of the reasons why I develop problems is because I don’t experience any pain in my feet.

This is normally how it goes:

*at some point in the conversation the fact that I’m disabled has cropped up*

Them: So is it really painful?

Me: No, I actually don’t have much sensation below the knee on either leg. I can feel the inside, but not the outside. And I can’t move any of my toes – except my big toes, but even then, not really.

Them: Woah, that must be weird. Nice that you can’t feel if you’ve stood on something, though.

Me: Umm…hahahha…not really…If I stand on something, then I’m not gunna feel it, so I’m just gunna keep walking on it until it gets wedged further into my foot. My shoe could be filling up with blood and I’m not gunna know until I take it off. Then I’ve also got really bad circulation, so that’s going to take ages to heal. So it’d be kind of helpful for me to be able to feel it because then I’d know to not walk. But I get what you mean hahaha, it does mean I can kind of ignore it if I have a problem.

*and, scene.*

Basically, my relationship with pain in my legs is love-hate. If I had pain, then we probably could’ve avoided most of my foot problems – let alone the COUNTLESS internal monologues of stress, trying to guess whether something’s kicking off in my shoe – but obviously, I also don’t hate that someone can stand on my foot and it’s all good. Plus, it does make for hilarious stories, like how one time a guy told me he’d been playing footsie with me under the table for a literal hour and I’d had absolutely no clue…Or how every time somebody apologies profusely for standing on me, or accidentally kicking my foot, I tell them they can do it again if they want; it doesn’t bother me. Or that time that I didn’t know my friend’s house had underfloor heating until I fell over.

If there’s one thing that I’m trying to do on these online pages when I talk about disability, it’s to show you that that word is used to describe an infinite amount of variations of the human body. We use it when we deem something to have ‘gone wrong’, and in viewing it negatively, we always assume the worst. And I’m not saying that disability doesn’t come with problems – of course it does. There are disabled people who experience huge amounts of physical pain, who have to take loads of medication, or who are reliant on someone else to help them complete the most basic of tasks, but that isn’t all their lives are, nor is every assumption of what a disability is relevant to every disabled person.

But I’m not bringing this up to incite the ‘omg I hate people, why is everyone so closed-minded with their understanding of disability?’ response. Honestly, as you can see in the generalised example I gave before, I have a laugh with pretty much every person who asks me about how much pain I experience.

The fact is, society has a super problematic understanding of, and approach toward disability, but to sort that out, we’ve got to have conversations where it’s comfortable enough for somebody to get it wrong, then learn why without being humiliated or villainised for not knowing something that they have no direct experience of. As the person who’s being stereotyped, and treated a certain way because of lame assumptions, that can be difficult sometimes – understatement of the year. But you’d hope that by staying patient, and explaining it this time, the next time that that person comes across somebody with a disability, they’ll be better equipped to ask questions rather than make assumptions.

You’d hope.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year?

21st Nov 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

When I graduated from university in the summer of this year, there were so many ‘next steps’ to complete that I never felt like I took a second to sit down and think about what I want from this part of my life. I’d already spent months juggling problems with my feet and writing essays, a dissertation, completing exams, and feeling totally disenfranchised with my university environment, so once it finished, to be honest I was relieved. Instead of taking a break from planning the next thing though, I just redirected my brain to going on holiday with my friend, spending time with my family, and the logistics of moving to a city to pursue a career.

I know that my ability to be super organised, focused, and to work like an absolute pack horse often gives people the impression that I have everything figured out, and honestly, sometimes I trick myself into thinking the same thing. It’s only really been since I’ve moved into this part of my life – away from the safety and structure of family and educational institutions – that I’ve realised there are so many parts of life where I’ve got absolutely no clue.

But you know what I’m going to say here, right?…That it’s totally okay to have no idea what you’re doing! In fact, it’s part of the fun.

I’ll level with you here though, and say that ‘living in the moment’ and not fixating on the million and one things I need to do next are not ways of living that come naturally to me. I’m a hard worker, and I’m a cup-half-full kind of a gal, but I’m also potentially one of the most impatient people you’ll ever meet. As in, I can experience a huge success on Monday and by Thursday, I’m texting my friends saying that I’m bored. But this is a habit that I’m really trying to get out of, because I’ve been given enough pep talks by drunken middle-aged women in the smoking area of pubs, to know that if I keep being this way, then one day I’ll wake up with wrinkles and greying hair, wondering where half of my life went.

(Shout-out to that brand of Yorkshire woman by the way; long may you ladies bring the flavour to the night-out.)

Unfortunately, so many of us spend a hefty amount of our time getting worked up over feeling like we don’t have every aspect of our lives figured out. I’ve had countless conversations with people of all ages stressing because they think that they’re not at the point they ‘should’ be at, but what does ‘should’ even mean anyway? Who decides what each of us ‘should’ be doing? Surely, that’s just us getting lost in social conventions and comparisons, before asking ourselves what it is we want to be doing right now and whether there’s anything we need to change to get there.

Maybe what I’ve written this week doesn’t feel relatable to you right now, but this is the time of the year when we’ve got to be extra aware of how those around us are feeling. I won’t lie to you, I love Autumn into Winter, but as much as I love watching the leaves change colour and hearing firework displays in the distance, this is also the season when many of us start to feel cold, tired, and fed up. I also know that a large proportion of my readers are British, so it’s likely that you suffer from our nation’s inability to talk about these types of feelings without aggressively cringing, and I get you; this blog isn’t that deep or existential, and still, I found it difficult to write what I wanted to say. But the momentary cringing or the incoherent sentences are better than the middle-of-the-night solo breakdown. So, if you’re feeling some type of way right now, then swallow your pride and just call your friend to talk about whatever’s on your mind; you might not share everything whilst you chat, but odds are, at some point in the conversation you’ll have a laugh. And when has that not helped to calm you down or cheer you up?

I love it when you patronise me x

14th Nov 202220th Nov 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 1 Comment

Having a physical disability since birth has impacted my life and personality in more ways than I’d ever be able to measure, which is why it’s always been odd when people have asked me whether I’d wish my disability away if I could. Clearly, the implication here is that life with a disability is seeped in stress and depression, so people think that it’d be totally understandable for me to sit there, teary-eyed, wishing that I wasn’t a person with Spina Bifida. And don’t get me wrong, there are moments when I feel this way (after all, it doesn’t always seem fair that I have this extra sack of sh- to deal with) but life is difficult for everyone at times, and I don’t know who or what I’d be without my physical disability. This doesn’t make me proud to be disabled or particularly enthused that I am, it just means that asking whether I wish I wasn’t is a bit of a silly question.

And yet, I’ve been asked this question on more than one occasion, so obvs I’ve given some thought to whether there are aspects of my personality that stem directly from having a disability, and whether there are ones that I’d probably have anyway. For the most part, I think that many of my personality traits have probably just been amplified by living with Spina Bifida, but I will say that I don’t think that this is the case for my silliness or adventurousness. If anything, I’ve had to make an active effort to not allow the disability to crush those natural personality traits. But on the other side of things, I do believe that there are also parts of my personality that have been formed as a direct result of living with Spina Bifida. For example, I have an incredibly low tolerance for being patronised.

Everybody’s experience with a physical disability is different, but from my short life so far, I will say that being patronised by literally anyone is just part and parcel of being disabled. It happens at hospital appointments, at school, amongst friends, at pretty much any public event you go to where you ask for disability assistance, in airports, in the doorway as you try to get into a club; honestly, I’ll be here all day if I list everywhere I’ve been patronised so we’ll leave it there for now. But what I sense you’re wanting me to explain, is how exactly people have been patronising towards me, because saying that it happens to me all of the time has likely made you a little self-conscious about whether you’ve been an active or passive bystander in the treatment of the disabled by the public. Or at least, I hope that that was a little thought in your head just now.

I’m not going to lie to you, there’s a specific voice that some people use when speaking to disabled people which puts my back RIGHT up when I hear it, but it’s almost impossible for me to describe with words. I’m even getting irritated just thinking about it (lol), but basically, people talk slower and softer, as if the words coming out of their mouths might break poor, defenseless, disabled me, even though quite often, the words they’re actually saying are denying me the help or respect I just politely asked for. Then there are the moments when you’re just straight-up dismissed or ignored, but honestly, I feel like I don’t get triggered so much by those because at least I’m not being treated as if I’m so fragile that one wrong move and I might break.

Undoubtedly, I’m also patronised because I’m a young woman (no surprises from the patriarchy there), it’s just that the physical disability provides an extra opportunity for society to infantilise me. Which is fun!

Sometimes I feel like my natural tendency towards being silly and positive means that I don’t always come across as a woman who can hold her own, but the fact is that people wouldn’t respond to me well if my reaction to being patronised because of my disability, age, and/or gender was blind fury – even though sometimes that’s exactly what I feel. And I’m not saying that I experience these sorts of things on the daily, but when I do, it can take everything within me to stay calm because in the moments when I have reacted wholly honestly, nobody likes or listens to a hysterical woman. So you smile and wave, you shelve the fury, and you bite back just enough so as to stand up for yourself, without losing their attention. It’s infuriating, but it’s a skill that you have to have if you’re disabled (and female), thus, it’s not one that I’d like to wish away.

But trust me, once you’ve recognised the ‘voice’ I tried to describe before, it’s something you’ll never un-hear. So please, for gods sake, try to not be the person to use it.

I’m not boring, I swear

7th Nov 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I’ve been humbled this month, because it’s now painfully clear to me that I’m a lot of talk when it comes to romantic relationships and not a lot of walk. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been the girl who sits there and reels off the relationship advice to my friends when they’ve come to me with problems – not to mention the blogs I’ve written on the subject – without ever really knowing what I’m talking about. (But to be fair, I must be pretty decent at this agony aunt role, given that my friends keep asking me for help…)

Like most, I’ve had my fair share of mistreatment in romantic situations but I also haven’t reeeaally put myself fully out there since I was a teenager, so as much as I talk about this topic, I’m more of an observer in this world rather than an active participant. And I’ve cemented this as a part of my identity, by having a tendency to latch onto situations I know aren’t going to work, simply because the inevitability of it never really going anywhere means I don’t ever really have to put myself out there. So basically, I’m just really scared of falling in love, and the world of dating kind of freaks me out.

Honestly, I just find it strange that you’re meant to go to spend time with someone you barely know, present yourself to them, and then at the end of those few hours spent together, decide whether ‘there’s anything there’. And yes, I acknowledge that I do think about these things far too much and should just let it be, but you only have to watch one episode of First Dates to be reminded of just how stress-inducing this type of human interaction is. It’s as if the idea that this is the time when you should get to know a person sucks every ounce of relaxation out of the moment and just transforms it into one hundred and one ways to say something you’d probably never say if you were with your friends, but you’re saying it now because you’re across from someone who’s expecting to get to know you, but what do you actually mean when you ask me what my hobbies are? What even are my hobbies? Do I have hobbies? I swear I wasn’t this boring when I was texting my friend before I arrived here.

And breathe.

That paragraph probably made me seem more stressed about this kind of situation than I actually am, but the point I’m trying to make here is that it’s okay if you’ve been in these situations, where you’ve had this outer-body experience where it’s felt like you’re watching yourself act completely differently to how you know yourself to be. It’s likely because (as I mentioned in last week’s blog), you’re in a situation with a total stranger and it’s a lot to expect yourself to be completely open with them after knowing them for a matter of hours. Plus, dating is a skill which we only seem to gain with practice – I for one do not currently possess this skill. Can I flirt with someone in my general day to day if the feeling is right? Yes I can. Do I know how to apply that to a context which has been explicitly labelled as a date? No I do not. Does that makes any sense? No it does not. But we move! As the marines would say: improvise, adapt, overcome.

Short sidenote here as well: it’s a very British thing for us to not get excited about stuff we love, and to talk down our successes when we’re with other people. Don’t do that, you don’t need to do that. If you’re excited about something or you love it, then speak!! Passion about something is only ever going to be attractive and as a nation, we are poor at talking ourselves up because we don’t want to seem lame. So let’s try to not do that.

Dating is a truly foreign world to me, and falling in love high-key terrifies me. However, flirting is fun, dating is fun, and I’m sure falling in love is some of the most fun a person can possibly have. Therefore, to all my friends who’ve been trying to put themselves out there recently, I’d like to say that I completely understand the frustration of ‘how am I supposed to know if I like this person, when I’ve only spent a few hours with them?’.Nonetheless, my best friends have put me in check by instructing me to only focus on the moment, rather than always going for five steps ahead. Treat it like those flow chart quizzes we used to get in magazines when we were little: do you enjoy spending time with this person? If yes, follow that arrow to ‘see them again’ and if no, follow the arrow to ‘don’t see them again’, and take it from there.

We’ve all been hurt by someone at some point – possibly more than we’d first considered- but it’d be a shame to let that past hurt dictate how much fun you can have in the future. So, trust your instincts and if you make a mistake or if you come across something you don’t like, then hey, that’s helpful information too.

Now brb whilst I try to follow my own advice.

Maybe don’t answer EVERY question…

31st Oct 202231st Oct 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I realised the other day that in the five years since I left school, I’ve spent a hefty amount of my time meeting and developing new relationships with people. I’ve travelled to lots of different places – both abroad and in Britain – and everywhere I’ve been I’ve come across people who I didn’t like, but more often than not, every new place brought me loads of new friends. In some cases, I even did a complete 180 in my opinion of someone as I acknowledged that your first impression of a person might not always be the best representation of what they’re actually like.

I’ve always been somebody who actively enjoys spending time with other people, however, even with this love for a ‘getting to know you’ conversation, I’ve noticed that in the past couple of years I’ve become far more cagey with a new group of people than I ever have been before. But to ensure that we’re all on the same page here, when I say ‘cagey’ I don’t mean that I’m rude or standoffish with people, it’s just that I’ve learned that it’s not always the best move to go into social situations as an entirely open book because by doing that, you don’t leave very much room to protect yourself.

When I was at school, I was the type of person who would tell anyone whatever they wanted to know about me: they could ask about my disability, my family, my fears, my aspirations, who I fancied, or literally anything else they could think of and I’d probably tell them the tale. In fact, I’d love telling the tale. This tendency towards openness and honesty isn’t something that I want to completely get rid of because without it we’d have no blog, and I also wouldn’t be myself, but there have been moments over the past few years when I realised just how exhausting it is to meet new people and answer all of these questions, only for many of those relationships to fizzle at some point. After all, once we’re out of school or university, most of us don’t have the time to maintain loads of friendships in between working and general living. So sometimes, it’s better to conserve your energy and not offload everything about yourself to whatever stranger you get along with for twenty minutes at a party, because repeatedly doing that in environments such as school, university, or a new job, really does take it out of you.

However, this newfound cageyness I’m talking about doesn’t just stem from the fact that it’s tired me out to be so honest, it’s also because I’ve sometimes been a little naive about who I can trust with the more vulnerable aspects of my personality. The fact is, that in order for any relationship to be fulfilling – be it platonic or romantic – there’s got to be an equal amount of effort put in by both sides, but if you’re like me then you might have had a few situations where you’ve realised that you’ve gotten upset because somebody hasn’t given you the same energy you were giving them, and even though that can be painful, were you maybe giving a little too much too quickly?..Then on the other side of this, have you potentially been the person in romantic relationships or friendships who has had somebody open up to you, and you haven’t respected their choice to do that in the way you should’ve?

I’ve probably done both, to be honest: I’ve definitely overshared and then been burnt by someone not caring as much as I thought they would, and I’m human, so I’ve undoubtedly been thought of as not being there for a person in the way they wanted me to be. Therefore, I’m not writing this blog because I think that there’s a perfect level of openness when forming relationships with new people – obvs, it’d be ideal for each of us to look into a crystal ball and know how much we can trust or rely on a person before we invest time into them, but that’d also take all the fun out of meeting and getting to know new people. So, I guess it’s about realising what works well for you in these situations.

For me, I was doing and giving way too much too quickly because I like knowing people really well (because I’m a freak and I find people very interesting), and I kind of figured that if I open up to someone then they’ll open up to me too, without respecting myself enough to acknowledge how exhausting it is to be that way. So, we’re not going to be a totally closed book, because human connection is one of the joys of everyone’s lives, we’re just going to be a liiiittle more selective about it to conserve energy and emotions. It’s all about give and take, and you’ve got to keep an eye on how much you’re letting people take versus how much they’re giving you.

It’s all just a bit too vanilla if you ask me

24th Oct 202224th Oct 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

This is going to feel quite strange to type, but my blog is nothing if not a reflection of what my friends and I have been saying to each other recently, so I’m just going to get straight to it: the ladies in my life are immensely sexually frustrated right now. Some have already fallen victim to their impulses by texting someone that they absolutely shouldn’t, but I hold out hope that by bringing attention to this problem on the blog, we can save some of my friends from that same unfortunate fate.

But before we dive into the details of the sexual frustration complaints I’ve been hearing from the gals, I’d first like to draw attention to the fact that a woman’s desire for sex is vastly underestimated by our society. I mean, most cis lads I’ve come across have assumed that their libido has always been way stronger than that of their cis female peers, but my god, I dare you to spend twenty minutes in a women’s bathroom on a Friday night, or eavesdrop on a group of lasses having a meal together, and then tell me the same thing. Women aren’t nearly as passive as we’ve been told we should be.

Western society has always had a tendency to think that women should feel apathetic towards sex unless there’s something wrong with them, in which case they’re totally obsessed with sex to the point of mania. So basically, either a woman isn’t really bothered about it, or she’s got a problem. This, along with all the other super helpful aspects of living in a patriarchy, has meant that women often feel like they shouldn’t talk about their sexual desires because if they do then they’re going to come across as a slut. However, there’s often a moment in female friendships where you and the woman you’re speaking to try to work out whether this is a safe environment for you to say exactly what you’re feeling, without judgment. It doesn’t always work out this way, but if you’re able to establish that type of trust as an aspect of your friendship, then you’d be lucky if you ever stop talking about sex and relationships with each other.

So, let’s get back to what the ladies have been saying recently then, shall we? Well, the general consensus isn’t that these young women aren’t getting attention from men – lots of them have dating apps where they’re messaging a few lads, or they’ve got some sort of work romance on the go. Their frustration, it seems to me, is coming from the fact that they’re not excited by any of it; the lads they’re meeting up with are lovely, and the conversations are nice, but they want passion. They want someone to give them a good old (consensual, of course) grab, kiss them up against a wall, stop tiptoeing around, and be told exactly what the lad’s thinking so they don’t have to keep guessing and can skip to the fun bit.

But finding this type of connection is difficult and incredibly rare – I’m still holding out for it too gals, don’t worry, I get you. And it’s tricky because when we complain about this heavy sense of boredom we’re all feeling at the minute with dating and sex, we can forget that sometimes we’re expecting lads to read our minds and make all the moves. Clearly, this is us enjoying an aspect of patriarchy that places the man as the one responsible for moving a heterosexual romantic relationship along, but it’s not entirely fair to expect that. However, I for one have made a lot of moves on lads and haven’t gotten much back so yes, it’d be nice to have one do the same for me at some point. And I’m sorry boys, but from the many many tales I’ve heard from young women, you’re actually a bit hopeless at reading signs…even when those signs have been the lass literally saying ‘I really like you, let’s do something’. At that point, you’ve got nothing to lose man, take a (not so risky) riskkkkk.

It goes without saying that romantic relationships are difficult, and navigating the early stages with someone that you don’t really know that well, trying to work out whether you’ve upset them or stressed them out can induce a lot of daily stress. Also, I know that I’m coming at this from the cis-female heterosexual perspective and hence it won’t be relatable for everyone; for example, I’m sure that men have plenty of frustrations they’d love to voice about dating young women as well. But just because something isn’t relatable to everyone, doesn’t mean that it isn’t relatable to anyone, and I’ve had far too many conversations with my female friends recently where we’ve been laughing/screaming/laughing about the lack of romantic passion in our lives.

So, to conclude, the ladies don’t want to date or have sex for the sake of it right now, they want something exciting; someone to be interested in them enough to make romance and sex fun for everyone involved. We’re just holding out for a bit more flavour.

An Indelible Friend

Author: elizabethmdouglas