You can’t sit with me

29th Feb 202429th Feb 2024 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

The question I get asked the most in relation to my disability, and the one I find the most difficult to answer is how I feel about the image of my shoes. Do I like them? Do I have to wear them all the time? Why does it matter what they look like at all, if they help me to walk?

If you look at my social media, then odds are you’re going to think that I don’t mind what my callipers look like, and maybe (at a push), I’ve made it seem like they make me feel quite confident. But sharing videos and images which include my shoes, or me walking, is a new thing I’m consciously doing to try and get used to what they look like, rather than something which comes naturally.

It’s not that I hate what they look like, or that I wish I didn’t have to wear them, however, it’s also not honest for me to say that I like my shoes or would choose them if I could. If I could. That’s the most important point. I don’t have a choice and have never had a choice, so the concept of wanting to wear something else feels pointless because I can’t. Therefore when I was a little girl, I just didn’t think about whether my callipers looked good, because in order for me to go anywhere or do anything, they were my only option.

The first time I actively considered their appearance was when I was in Year 11 and I was getting ready for prom with my friends; we all had beautiful (extortionately expensive – thanks Mum and Dad 😀 ) dresses, but my friends could wear pairs of matching heels with their outfits, whereas I had one option for footwear. An option which was definitely not the one I would’ve chosen if the focus what aesthetics. But again, if I wanted to actually go to the prom, then that was the one I had to wear, so it wasn’t worth spending much time sulking about it.

Moments like my Year 11 prom have continued in the years since; weddings, university balls, or nights out where I probably would’ve preferred matching my outfit with my shoes but haven’t moped too much about not being able to, to save myself needless upset. They weren’t often though, and they were fleeting. The most damaging time for my self-esteem relating to my shoes was university, where my Northernness and my personality made me feel like I didn’t fit so much at times, that I couldn’t be bothered for the disability to add another reason to stand out, so I mostly wore outfits covering my callipers for the first couple of years. One time, I remember laughing when a lad in a bar had been giving me the eye for a while, until he eventually came over to talk to me, only to spot my shoes then spin 180 and walk the other way. It was such a repulsive action that I genuinely found it funny and wasn’t hurt much by it, but it did sum up the way I felt seen by some of those around me at that time.

Since then, I’ve gotten back to the level of comfort I felt in my shoes before I became aware of how nasty the world can be at times. I surround myself with family and friends who regularly remind me that there’s nothing wrong with my shoes, or how I walk, and making videos for social media has forced a realisation that actually, my shoes can look quite cool with some outfits. Still, there’s something in my head that whispers that a man I like isn’t going to be interested in me if he sees my social media first; if he sees the conversations and expressions of disability, before he talks to me. I know it’s not logical or fair, but that little voice still tells me that if a lad I’ve met in person then sees and likes a post where he can see my callipers, then he’s not understood the video. He’s not realised what he’s watching.

It’s internalised ableism and it’s difficult to get rid of completely because according to hundreds of years of history and literature, disabled bodies aren’t supposed to be attractive – that doesn’t mean that they aren’t (OF COURSE), but I also grew up in this ableist society too so no matter my parents’, friends’, or wider family’s efforts, some aspects of the negative views towards disability are going to seep through. I do know the ideas aren’t fair though, so on the days when I don’t like what my shoes look like, I try to tell the voice in my head to quieten down. It’s the same voice everyone has – the one that tells you yes, you do look fat in that, or yes, everyone here does find you boring – it’s just mine has a fun, extra piece of ammo for the bitching.

Which is great!

But, we try not to end on downers here, so I want to finish this month’s blog by reminding myself that the voice is just a mean girl. And she’s not invited to the party.

Oh my god, I’m so embarrassed

12th Dec 202312th Dec 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I, like everyone on the planet, struggle with real, uncontrolled vulnerability. As one of my best friends made clear to me once, I express the emotionally vulnerable parts of myself in a very measured way; what I say isn’t untrue, or dishonest, it’s just I lead the expression of vulnerability and would find it far more difficult to relax into a situation and let the vulnerability happen.

For a long time, when I’ve been romantically interested in lads, I’ve gone in all guns blazing because another thing I struggle to do is not say what’s on my mind, and when that hasn’t gone so well, I’ve had my sad girl hours, telling myself it was rejection. But then friends and lads I’ve dated, have also told me that I’m difficult to read, which has seemed like a total contradiction. What can be difficult to read about me saying exactly what I mean?

Have I actually said what I wanted to, though? Or did I sugarcoat it in vagueness, distraction, or flirtation to avoid misunderstanding, judgment, or rejection?

A couple of years ago, one of my close friends jokingly said that she could never live with me because I’m too needy. She laughed, I thought it rude and unfair but put it down to a poorly-judged joke. Then she said it again during another social situation, and eventually it just became a joke she sometimes fell back on. That one stuck with me and went straight into the part of my brain where the various other piercing comments I’ve had from other people live. Like when lads I’ve been dating have called me ‘too much’, or the more back-handed ‘you’re actually quite sexy’ said with an air of surprise just to make my eyes narrow even more.

All of these comments link up to illustrate why I’m cautious about being vulnerable: I don’t want to be judged as less or weak. I’m a young woman, and I know the way those perceived weaknesses could negatively impact how people see and treat me, because patriarchy doesn’t often allow for women to have imperfections and still be seen as valid. Further to that though, I have a physical disability, and whenever I’ve been in a moment with my feet which has forced me to be totally physically dependent on others, I’ve felt pointless. I’ve continued on as normal to try to distract everyone, but in the back of my head, I’ve just got this intense embarrassment that even though internally I’m the same as I was yesterday, now I can’t even open a door on my own.

Nobody likes feeling weak. And even though there’s absolutely nothing wrong with asking for help when you need it, and even though I know I don’t become pointless or change when my disability pipes up, that’s how it feels sometimes. It feels humiliating, and it leads me to always think silly things like if a man I fancied saw me on crutches or talking about my disability on my social media pages, then he wouldn’t look twice. There’s internalised ableism in these thought processes – no doubt about that – but also there are real, tangible facts that disability is viewed by the world as being so awful for a person that it entirely consumes them and their life. So, you expend so much time and energy trying to prove to people that that isn’t all you are, that it makes the times when your day is kind of ruled by your disability feel even worse because how can you distract everyone from paying attention to it when you need them to wait for you so you can hop up the stairs on your crutches? (Because no, there isn’t a working lift).

I love sharing my life with other people and telling them the reality of what it’s like to be a young, physically disabled woman. I know I’m so much more than my condition, and I know that people think of me as so much more than that, so I needn’t worry about how I’m perceived. Nonetheless, as I sit on this sofa with a bandage on my foot, and bruises on my right side from using crutches and falling when trying to protect the bandage, I’d be lying if I said that I feel my best. I don’t feel bad, because I’m inside and therefore not stressed by the embarrassment of others seeing me this way, but I don’t like it. I don’t like that one tiny cut on the side of my foot can leave me so vulnerable. I’d rather it hurt for a couple of days but heal like everyone else.

Maybe this last paragraph isn’t necessary, but I need to say that this isn’t me wishing my body away, or disowning my Spina Bifida, it’s simply an attempt to explain that I don’t wake up every day and feel okay with having it. I know it’ll be fine, and that it’s nothing to feel embarrassed about, but logic and emotions aren’t always compatible. And so, I’m excited for when I can walk to the kitchen using both of my legs again. There’s no infection, so hopefully not long now. 🙂

Fake friends sounds boring

28th Nov 202328th Nov 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 2 Comments

I was scrolling on TikTok, and I saw a video of a woman doing some crazy acrobatic yoga moves whilst listing things she wished she’d known in her 20s. In all honesty, I was concentrating more on the poses she was able to strike – passively imagining myself giving them a go and ending up in A&E for an afternoon – but when I did listen to what she was saying, I noticed that the running theme was she wished she hadn’t wasted so much time with people who didn’t really care about her, and who she never actually trusted.

And I’ve spoken about this quite a lot recently because the first four years of my 20s have included some failed friendships, as well as management of insecurities that came out of them. I’ve never struggled making friends – in fact, when I was little my (then) teenage brothers used to complain to our parents about me having loads of friends because occasionally I’d come home with a head full of knits, which I’d very generously then pass onto their 15-year-old heads. Sorry for that one lads; wasn’t on purpose.

Anyways, throughout school, I always had big groups of friends. But regardless of the group, eventually, one of the girls would end up waking up one morning and deciding that she hated me, make snide comments, criticise me for things I couldn’t change, and ultimately turn the other way. Friendship over. My efforts to avoid it or work it out never seemed to achieve much either. Every time it happened it stung, but as I got older this pattern started to become duller because often I was sure that I’d not done anything wrong to make her feel that way because if I had, I would’ve been the first to start crying and apologise because the guilt would’ve made me feel physically sick. Plus, in these moments when I’d asked the young girl in question why there was now a problem, she’d get all vague and heavily imply (or say) that she just didn’t like me. You can’t do much with that. Except get paranoid about when within the years-long friendship that became true.

Obviously, I’m not a perfect person, I’ve not always been the best friend to people but when I’ve made mistakes before I’ve been able to genuinely apologise, then move on from whatever it was I did. Plus, given that these times when I did make mistakes it was with my friends, who I love and care about, I never meant to upset them, so of course I said sorry – and meant it. But when I think of all of the friendships I’ve had since I was about 11, it becomes clear that some of those friends ended up making me feel pretty insecure. With certain people, I privileged avoiding conflict and ensuring that everyone liked me so much, that I ignored the snide comments, and told myself I was okay with always being the one to text, or call, or drive to wherever the other person wanted to be.

When your friends take the mick out of you, a lot of the time it’s harmless, genuine fun. They make a dig at you, you make a dig at them, everyone laughs, nobody is offended, everything is fine. However, you also have to be careful to notice when something actually stings you in a way that wasn’t intended by the person who threw the joke. Or maybe they did kind of mean for it to hurt. And maybe you’ve heard that joke that suggests they don’t actually like you a fair few times now, so it doesn’t feel very ‘jokey’ anymore.

No matter how long you’ve been friends with someone, or where or how that friendship started, you’re not entitled to their time, nor are you to theirs. Like everything, friendships require you to both put effort into them and if that balance becomes so off that the friendship ultimately breaks down, it can really hurt. Way more than when you stopped texting that lad you liked for a month. To try to avoid this pain now, I’ve noticed myself approaching friendships with people differently than before.

If someone is terrible with their phone then that’s (sort of) fine, but I can’t rely on them the way I might want to, so I place some distance there. Whereas, if they make slightly mean comments about me or what I do, or if they only ever message me when they want something from me, then that’s not friendship to me. So I don’t need it. But ultimately, it boils down to this: if you wouldn’t take it from someone you’re dating, then why are you taking it from someone you call a friend? Those I keep close to me now only make me feel good, and I wholeheartedly trust that every single one of them actually likes me. It sounds so silly, but I don’t think it’s something I’ve ever felt able to say with such certainty.

*Cue one of them thinking they’re funny and texting me ‘haha I actually hate you xo’ after reading this.

The part of being on your own, that we don’t always say out loud

21st Nov 202321st Nov 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I used to really struggle to enjoy doing anything on my own. And I know that that’s not really a cool thing to admit, because everybody seems to like to say they’re an introvert on social media nowadays, but as the youngest sister of three brothers, until I moved to university, I can honestly say I’d never spent much time with my own thoughts. Especially since I wasn’t the teenager who shut their bedroom door as soon as they got back from school; if I’d been alone in my bedroom for longer than an hour on a weekend, it was so strange that at least one of my parents would be coming upstairs at some point to ask me if I was okay.

I didn’t even feel like I was ever on my own when I went solo travelling for a few months. If anything, this period of time was made so fun because I spent 99% of it around people: ones from all corners of the world, with all sorts of life experiences I’d never heard of, so I spent a big chunk of my trips listening to and telling stories with strangers.

And so, university was the time when I started to properly be on my own, and if I’m frank about it, I hated it. For various reasons, the environment made me insecure and the extra time alone with my thoughts didn’t do much to fight that. But I grew tired of feeling this way, and my love of a plan made me stop waiting for someone to agree to do things with me and just go do them on my own. To psyche myself up for it I thought, hey if people look at me weird when I walk into this cinema solo, then I’ll just ignore it. But then you get there, and nobody cares. It’s great.

It wasn’t the side-eyes from other people that made me a little self-conscious about doing things on my own, though – not really – the aspect of being alone which still makes me a little nervous is that it’s not always very safe for me, because of my gender.

Ask any woman and she’ll be able to tell you the tricks we use to avoid weirdos when walking down a street in the dark: only wearing one headphone, having your keys prepped like a weapon in between your fingers, using that peripheral vision to check if somebody is following you, or calling a friend for most of the journey – to name a few. Once the sun has gone down, you feel your sense of safety crack and during some journeys, no matter how short or familiar, you find yourself holding your breath a little until you can shut a door behind you. It sounds dramatic, but it’s the reality for many women who have the audacity to go outside once the sun is down. And it’s something that my brothers and my male friends have very rarely had to even imagine.

Not only am I female and therefore (unfortunately, ludicrously) more vulnerable to being attacked or harassed, but I also have a physical disability and I’m 5 foot 1, so I’m hyper-aware of the fact that if somebody really wanted to corner me, or pick me up, then there’s very little I’d be able to do about it. I wouldn’t be able to run away. And I feel that knowledge so viscerally when I’m on my own, that I try to take every precaution to maintain my safety so that I can do something as outlandish as go to a concert or a theatre show and enjoy it. Clearly, I don’t think it’s even remotely okay that I have to live like this, but not taking the precautions and as a result, maybe having something happen (touch wood that it doesn’t please as you read this, thank yOU) wouldn’t be worth it.

So yes, I’m a huge believer in doing things on your own because it’s brought me a sense of empowerment and personal strength that I don’t think I could get from anywhere else. However, the way the world is means that if a woman is happy to spend time by herself, she’s also probably going to feel unsafe or vulnerable at points. It’s an unfair and vile reality, but ignoring the fact of it doesn’t do anything to change it. Therefore, I encourage you to go traveling, or out for food, or for a drink, or to the cinema, or to the beach to read a book on your own – to get to know yourself – but remember your safety too.

Then if you see someone enjoying their own company, respect that, and if she asks you to walk her home, don’t let your ego get carried away by thinking that she’s proposing. Yes, she might fancy you, but also, she might just want to reach a doorway without feeling that weight on her back as she walks towards it.

Change that channel

7th Nov 20237th Nov 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 1 Comment

If you read last week’s blog, then you’ll already know that at the minute I’m on a getting-to-know-myself moment. (I was going to say journey, but I was a little bit sick in my mouth as I started to type it, so we’ll stick with the slightly less cringey, ‘moment’). Within this, I’ve decided to take a break from the world of romance and dating, but I’ve approached this break differently than I have before.

Like many of us who experience tedious, stressful, intermittently exciting situationships rather than healthy relationships, I’ve had times when I’ve told myself and everyone around me that I’m ‘so done with it’, I’m ‘not interested’, and I’m ‘just not going there’. And then I’ve scrolled on Hinge. Or had those wise words of ‘it’ll come when you’re not looking for it’ ringing in my ears, thinking I’ve now told the world that I’m not looking for it, so does that mean that it’s right around the corner? Therefore, I’ve not been taking a break at all, I’ve just done the same thing in a different font.

However, this time I decided to take a measure that quite a few people viewed as a little bit extra when I told them about it: I chose to stop watching any TV programmes that are based on falling in love and relationships.

Normally, I’m the type to watch the Netflix reality dating shows, like Love is Blind, Perfect Match; a little bit of Love Island here and there, then some Married at First Sight in the mornings whilst putting my make-up on. And even though many of these shows highlight how horrid relationships can be – with lasses crying their eyelashes off and lads losing the will to live – they also pump out the idea that romantic love is what everyone is always looking for and that without it, we’re lacking. Whilst I do believe that pretty much everyone wants a healthy, loving romantic relationship, when you’ve struggled to find one, having these programmes constantly remind you that you don’t have one can really impact your self-esteem. So I turned them off.

‘How’s that been going?’, I hear you ask. Well, do you know what? The effects have actually been really noticeable. Most obviously, I just don’t think about my not being in a relationship anywhere near as much as I did a few months ago. I’d never been kept up at night about it before, but I’ve definitely had fewer moments of sinking into sadness or loneliness on those evenings when I’ve been tired and my mind has begun to wander toward the sad girl playlist. In fact, I’ve begun to passively assess what kinds of things I’d been privileging over the past couple of years when it came to dating, and how it’s been a little bit off.

For example, I told my friend how as I was driving into work, a thought crossed my mind where I realised that I hadn’t dated or texted a lad who has made me properly laugh since I was a teenager. Yes, I’d laughed with them, or they’d laughed at something I’d said once and fed off of that, but nobody has properly made me giggle in a really long time. And I’ve always considered humour as a really important thing for me – or at least I thought I had. Also, I haven’t had really interesting conversations with these men about books, or art, or music, or anything that is actually important to me. So honestly, I’m wondering what we really spoke about.

I’m not saying any of this to suggest that all the lads I’ve been interested in have been boring – they absolutely haven’t, because I’m not one to waste my time with somebody who has nothing to say – it’s just that with all the popular culture in the world telling me that I need to be in a relationship ASAP, so I can be validated, I’ve been forgetting what actually makes me excited about people. Too often we privilege the story, or the text notification, or the sex over what we really love to do or talk about – sex is obviously still included in the ‘things we love to do with a romantic partner’, don’t get me wrong, but you know what I mean: it’s not as fun if you’re not emotionally invested in whoever you’re doing it with.

Maybe you don’t resonate with the things I’ve said here, but if you are the person who’s bored of feeling lonely on a Friday evening, or forever the third wheel to all their friends’ relationships, then try turning those shows off and see what it does for your state of mind. I’m not saying I’ll never watch a rom-com or a reality dating show again, it’s just that allowing yourself a break from the constant reminder that you’re single might show you that there are lots of far more interesting things about yourself than your relationship status.

You don’t look like you did

31st Oct 202331st Oct 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 1 Comment

I’ve been writing these blogs now for 4 years, and I think that throughout that time, the way I’ve approached the pages and what they’ve meant for me has constantly changed. To begin with, I didn’t think that anyone would read them and I had a level of embarrassment at the thought that someone ever would, and now that I know that a lot of people do, there have been times when I’ve felt more cautious about writing so honestly. However, these online pages have become a way for me to express myself in a raw, simplified manner, and I feel like if you read them, then you come into this expecting honesty, so whilst I might not give you every detail, I can’t help but continue to overshare.

However, lately, it’d felt like the only topics I could write about that would be of any interest to you – my anonymous reader – would have to center around either my dating life or my disability. If I wrote about anything else, I couldn’t quite settle with myself that anyone would be bothered. But (ironically), only writing about these subjects didn’t feel honest.

As far as dating goes, frankly, I’ve become tired of writing the same thing – or feeling like I am. I’ve tried different approaches when it comes to dating, I’ve had many an exciting tale to tell (and have enjoyed telling them), but ultimately those stories have ended with me staying single when I’d probably rather not be. Except, I’m not sure if that conclusion is true for me anymore. For years I’ve defined myself in some way as being the one with the chaotic love life, keeping my friends entertained, and each time it’s ended with me not in a relationship, I’ve told myself that in some way I failed. Even though every ‘thing’ I’ve had wouldn’t have worked anyway (clearly); in many of them I was more invested in the story than the person, and in some, the circumstances meant that it was simply out of my control. At no point did I fail, and I’m bored of leaning into that narrative.

Also, I’m far too confused about what I want and who I am at the minute to even go near the stress and effort of the dating world. You’ve got to grit your teeth and put up with a lot for dating in the current climate, so for now, I choose to not.

Last week I drove myself around Wales for a few days because I wanted to address the feeling of confusion that had been lingering in the back of my mind for months. For the very first time, I’d been unsure of what I was doing, why I was doing it, why I wanted to do it, and who I even was in my head. I was trying to reconcile having to speak about my disability far more often than I ever have before in order to ‘represent’, whilst still having conflicting views about my own body and how I want the world to perceive it. I also miss my family, because in the last year many of those who I’m closest to emotionally, are no longer that near physically. And although I’ve made it happen for myself, my career trajectory so far has been quick, and I’ve given myself very little time to keep up with it. But still, somehow I was confused as to why I kept waking up and feeling exhausted. So I took myself to my happy place, the middle of nowhere, where I drove for hours, sang at full pelt, breathed cleaner air, thought about nothing for stretches of time, and then tried to work out what I feel.

I concluded, that so much has changed in my life in a very short space of time that somewhere along the way I got a bit lost. I turned 24 and now there are things I used to tolerate, accept, or love that I don’t feel the same way about anymore. For example, I’ve only ever tolerated my disability: now I want to like it. I used to love to be able to tell my friends a story about some complicated romantic situation I found myself in: now I only want simple. I used to accept that if I wanted to have fun, then I would always have to be around other people to do that: now I want to find the same joy in moments when I’m by myself.

Rather than be frightened by my mid-20s confusion – as I was for a couple of months back there – I’ve decided that I just need to sit in it and see what happens. Within all the change and the rush of progressing my career, I need to get to know myself as a 24-year-old, because I no longer look or feel like I ever have before. Obviously, the core parts are still there – my eyes are still green, my hair is still curly, and my intentions are still always good – there are just a few extra, or slightly different, things that I need to figure out.

Finding my balance

17th Oct 202317th Oct 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 2 Comments

I’ve wanted to write a blog about London ever since I moved, but I’ve never quite known the words to type. This partly stems from the fact that for the first week of living here, I cried every day out of panic, anxiety, and loneliness, and I’ve never known how to articulate why it was such a shock to my system. But, more than that, I’ve been reluctant to say what’s on my mind because of a reason someone whose friendship and opinion I’d held very close (and whose London location had impacted where I’d chosen to live) had given as to why they didn’t want my friendship anymore. Namely, they didn’t understand why or how I could move to London when I’d been so vocal with criticism for the city whilst at university.

The criticism this person was referring to, was when I would get annoyed, upset, or frustrated about the fact that London has everything: it’s a cultural and economic hive of activity. Yes, this tends to be the way of capital cities, but in this country, the north-south divide is so much that if you’re from anywhere above Birmingham, it can feel like you may as well have a different passport. This feeling is then reinforced by our government coming across as so London-centric, that the North often seems to be treated like a different, somewhat irrelevant country by those who have the power and the money. And that’s not fair. A view, which after living here for over a year, I stand by.

I’m a northerner, but I’m not from the middle of nowhere, nor was my family ever in a situation where we seriously struggled with money whilst I was growing up – we didn’t have heaps of it, but I never had to think about money as a problem in the house as a child. Therefore, I don’t have an issue here because I grew up with a chip on my shoulder due to my own family’s financial situation: I know that I am very privileged in lots of ways. However, what I also know is that every time I go home something else is shut. And wherever I go – whether that be to a university in the Northeast which is mostly populated by students from in and around London, or to a BBC newsroom in the capital itself, I never feel like I totally fit. Or, as my fellow generation z-ers might say: I’m not truly seen. But to achieve what I want to achieve, I’ve got to be here, because this is where the opportunities and bosses are.

The north-south divide might be an uncomfortable topic if you’re in the firing line, but it is a real, tangible thing, and it doesn’t sit so well for me to hear people from London saying that everything above Birmingham blurs into one for them, because the implication is that everything above doesn’t matter. So HS2 doesn’t continue up towards Manchester, the jobs stay down here, and I have my accent (though playfully) mocked at university by people who don’t fancy going out on a Saturday because it’s locals night and the locals are just ‘a bit embarrassing’.

Where I’m from has a multitude of issues – socially, economically, culturally, historically: all of the above. But it seems like when you’re in a place that has been somewhat cast aside and deemed irrelevant by those in power, a sort of kindness and f*** it attitude emerges. Some of the men might have a tendency to go out on a weekend, get blind drunk, and look for a fight because they’ve got nothing else to do, but I remember car crashes on the main roads, and every single person in the terraces flooding outside with blankets, coffees, and offers of support. I don’t feel that same trust and vulnerability here.

This being said, it’s difficult not to like London, with its huge variety of vibrant, kind, amazing spaces and people, but that doesn’t make it an easy place to call home. The fact is that no matter how much I might love moments of living here, I feel a smugness to London which says that if you’re from here, why would you ever leave or care about anywhere else? Only, the capital is where all the rules are made, and until the disparity between the North and South is actually confronted without people seeing it as a personal attack on them and their home, then we’ll continue to subconsciously hate each other, and nothing will improve for anyone except the ultra-rich and privileged – many of whom, live down here.

So, do I like living in London? In lots of ways, yes – in fact, most of the time, yes. But with the hustle and bustle comes an impersonality, where after a while, I feel myself get meaner and more focused on what I’m doing, rather than what’s going on around me. The weather is better, it’s exciting, and London is beautiful, but if I smile at someone on the street or on the tube, they either look surprised or uncomfortable and you can only go 20mph everywhere, so I’m constantly staring at traffic lights; not going anywhere. My career is here though, so I’ll have to stay for a while, and I’ve concluded that to give myself the best chance of loving my life here, I’ll have to regularly leave because otherwise I’ll lose my mind.

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.

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’.

An Indelible Friend

Tag: discussion