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.

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.

Consistency is key

5th Jul 20222nd Sep 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

No matter how much I post about my disability on the internet, I am not, and never have been, very good at asking for help with it. I can do my own TedTalk in a room full of strangers about how ‘it impacts my life’, or overshare on the internet, but internally, I still wince from embarrassment each time I have to ask someone to alter their actions to accommodate my disability.

As a little girl, I had six operations which caused me to spend prolonged periods of time in a wheelchair and at hospital appointments, but I still don’t remember ever feeling ‘different’ because of that – shout-out to some top-tier parenting from Mr and Mrs Douglas there. Obviously, there were times when I was confused and frightened by it all; I mean, I remember the fever when an operation on my left foot got infected so the bone could be seen from the outside, I remember bawling my eyes out every time my parents told me I had to go in my wheelchair, and I still physically cringe when I think about getting stitches taken out of my feet after operations. But in and amongst all of that, I climbed as many hills as my able-bodied brother whenever we went camping, and I have no memories of feeling lesser than my peers or my siblings because I was ‘disabled’. However, I’ve come to realise that this was largely due to the fact that until I was in my mid-to-late teens, my disability wasn’t my own; it was my parents’. This Spina Bifida that everyone told me about was something I knew I had, but the dealing with it was something my parents did; like any six-year-old, I just went wherever I was told with a smile on my face and a Cinderella dress on.

Stuff started to get a bit sticky when I was a young teenager though, because by this point my friends and I were old enough to go into town on our own. So, instead of having the luxury of being lifted onto my Dad’s or my oldest brothers’ backs when the walking distances started to get a bit too far, I had to rely on my 14-year-old friends being emotionally aware enough to know the limits of my disability, even though I’ve always been too embarrassed and too stubborn to bring it up. Inevitably, this didn’t go very well and there were a lot of angry tears at the kitchen table.

Then in my late teens, I did really try to quieten my ego in favour of being responsible with my feet. But that’s indescribably difficult to do when not a single person around you is having to do the same – not to mention the fact that I’ve also got a naturally adventurous, ‘go on then!’ attitude which makes me want to do things I probs shouldn’t. So I effectively had to go through a period where I mourned the fact that I was too old to ignore my disability now; I had to grow up a bit. But thankfully, the wallowing didn’t last very long since crying over not being able to run a marathon or go on a hike for four hours wasn’t going to change anything. Plus, I can do plenty of other stuff anyway.

Sometimes I do still feel the loss though, like when I’m walking through town with my friends and they’re walking faster than me, my legs are getting tired, and I’m getting out of breath trying to keep up. Or, when another person in a Council or Security uniform tells me I can’t park here, that there aren’t any disabled spaces, and that they don’t know where I can go. Or at the thought of going on a date with someone I’ve just met, them wanting to walk around, me not being able to, and having to talk about my disability before I get to say anything else about myself.

Basically, I find asking for help with my disability humiliating and exposing, and I’ve been disappointed by a lot of people before, so it’s likely that if you do offer to help me out, even though I’ll obviously really appreciate it, it’ll take me a minute before I trust that you’re not going to forget next time. I know that that can be annoying if you’re intentions are sincere, but I can’t help it.

If you do want to be supportive of someone with a disability, I think the best piece of advice I can give you is to be as subtle and consistent with your actions as you can. I might speak very publicly about disability, but even I don’t want it to be brought up in every conversation – in fact, the best-case scenario for me if I’m out and about, is you being the one to suggest sitting down or getting an uber because you’re tired. That way, my legs are looked after and I don’t feel guilty or embarrassed for making you do something you wouldn’t normally have to.

Graduation, but then what?

14th Jun 202214th Jun 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

In my head, I think that I’m pretty good at hiding my emotions…but then every time I’m even slightly upset or angry, it usually takes my friends, family, or colleagues about 0.5 seconds to notice. So clearly, I’m slightly deluded. However, whilst it may be true that my overall mood is very easy for others to discern, I am that person who takes on a lot of things and eventually snaps when all of those things have piled up in my head. Then it’s in the moments when I’m close to snapping that my mood goes down, I’m tired, and I’m likely to burst into an ugly cry if anyone hits me with the ‘are you okay?’.

Don’t worry, I’m not about to confess to the internet that I’m in the middle of having an existential crisis…Though I will say that I’ve had a pretty intense last few months which have gifted me both good and bad stress, resulting in a few days when my mood hasn’t been as chirpy as it is normally. And one of these stresses has been something that I know many of my peers are overthinking right now: what the hell are we going to do after graduation?

For me, my graduation from university mostly brings a sense of relief. The last 3 years have been a lot of fun in parts but I’d be lying if I said that I don’t feel ready to leave; I’m tired of being confronted by the same annoying problems brought to me by Durham University, and I ache to leave the education system behind for a second. I mean, I’ve been in it for 17 years! That’s a long time. Granted, I had a year out before university but I did work in 2 schools for 6 months of that…then I taught in 3 of the 4 countries I visited…So no matter how much I know I’ll continue to study something for the rest of my life, I think I’d like to give formal education a rest for now.

It’s scary though. I can see it in my friends’ faces when we actually sit for a minute and talk about what we each want to do after uni: everyone masks the apprehension at being thrust into the adult world with talking about ‘panic masters’, internships, job placements, and the classically vague ‘maybe I’ll go travelling’ statements. The fact is that many of us have absolutely no clue what’s next or where we’ll end up, and it’s stressing a lot of young people out that they’re expected to have their whole life mapped out when just a couple of weeks ago we were sitting our exams.

I’m a lucky one in that I do know what I want to do, and I have made moves towards that, but even I feel like I haven’t had a second to breathe before I have to sort the rest of my life out. Also, there’s a stigma against the graduates who choose a different route from the traditional ones. For example, I know I’m moving to a new city and I know what I want to do there, but a career as a radio presenter doesn’t exactly have a cushty grad scheme for me to apply for, so whenever I tell people my plans, they inevitably sound half-baked, and that makes me self-conscious. Even though, we don’t all have to work in an office straight after university if we don’t want to…

Sometimes everything feels like it moves so quickly that there’s no way you can keep up, then other days it’s easy – occasionally, even a bit boring. I’m definitely not qualified to be giving advice on what to do in these situations given that I’m part of those going through the experience, but what I have said to my friends when we’ve been in the car or in a living room, stressing about the future, is that the best approach to have is to do whatever makes you happiest. That might be another year of university, working abroad and travelling, moving to a new city to start a new job, or having absolutely no clue and needing a couple of months of nothing to figure yourself out. Obviously, money is a factor in this and it’s not always easy to do exactly what you’d ideally want to do, still, try not to put so much pressure on yourself to have everything mapped out right now; take a minute to breathe.

Truly, there is no rush.

So,you think you’re a sl**

24th May 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

At this age, lots of us like to sit with our friends and rip into each other for all the times someone has been a liiiittle questionable when it comes to their romantic relationships – whether those relationships be purely sexual, on the road to something stronger, or somewhere in between. Maybe you’re the prolific dater, maybe you’re the type to get with someone then change your mind the second they start to like you, maybe you really enjoy flirting with people but you’re too picky (*cough* scared *cough*) to commit to something serious. Or, maybe you’re like me and you’re a combination of a few… 🙂 ! Well, whatever you are, as long as you’re not being awful to people, then I don’t see much harm in it. And, the chaos does make for a good drinking game.

I’ve posted enough blogs by now for you to know that I’ve never been in a relationship, and that the lads I attract tend to be a whole lot of talk and very little walk…HoWeVeR, I have been the third wheel for enough relationships (and been involved in enough situationships) by now to be able to say something about how we’re treating each other. And the main thing that I’ve noticed is that people are so terrified of being on their own, that they stay or get themselves into situations simply because it’s comfortable, and/or because out here in the single world most people are screwing each over left right and centre. I mean, the sheer lack of respect I’ve heard (and seen) demonstrated by some single people when they’re talking to or getting with someone on a night out is ridiculous. And there’s just no need for it!

I’m not saying that we can all come out of every experience looking like the good guy, because no matter how hard each of us might try, there’s always going to be a few moments when we’ve messed up and we just have to swallow that. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t at least try to not be a d*ck, though. Yes, this age is probably the best and most convenient age to get with as many different types of people, in as many different situations as your heart desires because it’s a time when we’re free to put effort into figuring out who we are and what we want, but be aware of what you’re doing as you do it pls.

I’m a big believer in the power of surrounding yourself with sex-positive people who don’t feel the need to apologise for their sexualities because as much as I’m also very sex-positive, there are times when I can fall victim to the voice in my head that likes to give me a cheeky slut shame when I’m hungover. And it’s never about how many people you get with because I know lasses who feel rubbish about the 1 or 2 people they’ve slept with or texted again when they shouldn’t have. It’s about the fact that lots of us aren’t allowing ourselves and others to just have a little bit of fun.

Personally, I’ve not been hurt by a lad in quite a long time now but that’s just because I got bored of being disappointed and making all the moves, so I’m leaving it up to the lads to have the balls from now on. But me having that perspective right now, doesn’t make it inevitable that I’m going to start being rude to a lad who I kiss in a bar by ignoring his texts or playing with his emotions. It also doesn’t mean that I wake up the next day and tell myself off for kissing someone I don’t intend to date. And finally, it most certainly does NOT give me an excuse to judge and shame my friends for having a different approach to romance than me.

So if you’re going to take anything from this week’s ramblings, let it be the acknowledgement that even though it’d be impossible to never be the bad guy in relationships, that isn’t an invitation to always forget about respect. Ask out who you want to ask out, kiss them if you’re both into it, try and be nice about it if you’re not, and go on, have a bit of a FLIRT!

Something’s wrong with my face today

3rd May 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Do you ever have those days where for some reason none of your clothes seem to fit you the way they did the last time you tried them on? You’re getting ready for the day, or for a night out, and your face just doesn’t face the way it should, you’re clothes don’t look right, your hair won’t do what it’s told, and the time is starting to run away; you’re going to be late to whatever you’re supposed to get to, so you start to get a bit hysterical and self-critical until you just wish you could crawl back into bed, hit a reset button, and try again tomorrow when everything hopefully does what it’s supposed to.

Just me?..

I’ve written before about how people shouldn’t let their insecurities control them, and I wondered whether I should write about this topic again when I could just reshare an entry I’d written a couple of years ago. Except, my body, and a whole lot of other stuff, has changed since then and I don’t really see this as a problem that can be fixed by a few hundred words.

So I’m going to give you a few hundred more! Yay!

We each know the power which comes with feeling confident, but like many other feelings, confidence is unfortunately very brittle. Just the other day, I’d woken up feeling pretty good about myself but it only took a few silly things happening throughout the day to leave me with a mind full of self-criticism by the time I was getting into bed for the night. And the frustrating thing is, that the moments which chipped away at my confidence were so minor it was stupid: I saw my reflection in a full-length mirror and I didn’t like the way my legs in my callipers looked, then a friend took a photograph of me and another friend and I thought my arms looked fat, and finally, the hot weather made me tired and subsequently self-conscious about how obvious my Spina Bifida was whilst walking through town.

Not one of these things is important, nor are they anything anyone else would take any notice of, let alone care about. But that’s what insecurity is: getting stuck inside your head about silly things which in the grand scheme of things, do not matter. Only, they matter to you and sometimes they matter so much that you torture yourself over thinking about them.

I’m lucky enough to be able to keep my insecurities at bay most of the time. But the times when I can’t – which do tend to be either when I’m drunk drunk, or experiencing the boozer’s blues the day after drinking – in those moments, I can’t do much except let myself just sit in it. I eat loads of snacks, or I cry to my friend, or I watch a film, or I stare at the wall whilst listening to my sad playlist. And I know that if a psychologist were to read those coping mechanisms, they’d probably say that they’re all really unhealthy – disclaimer: I’m definitely not about to make a case for you to do exactly what I do. However, I do think that my generation tries to psycho-analyse themselves far too much and that we need to just feel whatever it is we’re feeling for a second, without self-diagnosing. Obviously, there are limits and lines where a person needs help but it’s also okay to feel naff for an afternoon. In fact, surely it’d be worrying if we didn’t feel like rubbish once in a while?

I’m not going to patronise you now by listing all the reasons why we should be kinder to ourselves because I’m not a motivational speaker (shocking, I know), but also because we all know this already and knowing that I shouldn’t criticise myself, unfortunately, doesn’t mean that I won’t from time to time. It’s about being able to strike that balance where you allow yourself to feel what you need to, whilst also making moves to pick yourself up out of any ruts you encounter – it’s not always easy, and I’m not a pro, but we do our best.

So if you do wake up and your face isn’t facing, or your body isn’t bodying, and although you know it’s just in your head you’re still feeling meh, then that’s alright! As our lord and saviour Hannah Montana once said: everybody has those days.

My dissertation was about sex! :o

5th Apr 20225th Apr 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 2 Comments

Considering that quite a few of you took part in the research, it won’t come as a surprise that I wrote my dissertation on whether physically disabled women are perceived as sexy by the societies they live in. (Big big thank you to everyone who took part btw). I don’t really fancy plagiarising myself here though, so I won’t go into the minute detail of the dissertation, but since so many of you contributed and were interested in the topic, it’d be rude of me to not give you the low-down of why I chose it, and what I discovered. So buckle up kids.

If I’m honest, my diss was partly another effort to understand why my love life insists on being so dire. In my first year of university, I wrote a blog about how a friend had asked me whether I thought my disability had ever hindered lads from asking me out or taking things further with me, and what I said then remains true for me now: yes, it has, but I’d be shocked to see anyone admit it. From all my research, and from what I’ve literally seen, able-bodied people are tentative to date or be intimate with physically disabled people (whether maliciously or not), and for the ones with the disabilities, this has at best resulted in being ignored or passively rejected, and at worst just straight-up abused.

The work that I’ve done so far is minuscule when compared to how much work needs to be done. I looked at ‘physically disabled women’ in particular but even that phrase is kind of hollow because it doesn’t even begin to describe the vastly diverse group of people it’s trying to categorise. Furthermore, I didn’t have the words or time to study the impact of race, gender, economic background, type of disability, and all the other aspects which would inevitably influence the experience of sexuality for individuals. I also didn’t have the opportunity to talk to disabled people directly; I used a tonne of literature, but nothing can come close to hearing the words from the ones who feel it. So, whilst my work was informed and (I hope) useful, to call it the tip of the iceberg would be a huge understatement, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I continue to write about this for the rest of my life.

Nonetheless, the overarching theme of this dissertation was one of acceptance and optimism from most of the people who answered my questions. What I will say though, is that often your optimism was naive; it was comforting, but it didn’t really line up with the reality of the world. People gave the correct response by saying that it shouldn’t matter if you have a disability, and it shouldn’t matter how that impacts sexuality because anyone can find love, sex isn’t a fixed thing, and disability shouldn’t ever threaten a person’s ability to experience pleasure within relationships. Only, saying that something shouldn’t happen, doesn’t make it not happen.

For months, I’ve been exposed to the disabled experience on a level that I’d never seen before: for the first time, I was reading and listening to things that felt totally relatable rather than 85% there. The fact is that like all of the ‘isms’, ableism is so ingrained within our society that just because I have a disability, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have prejudices against the disabled community. There’s plenty to unpack there, but I think I’ll leave that for another blog (or two, or three…). But to generalise, the truth is that we’re so concerned with looks and frightened by what we don’t personally understand, that the disabled body has been persistently and systematically defined as undesirable and in need of a cure. To put it even more plainly: I’m disabled, so that means that my body is wrong, so it can’t be pretty and it definitely can’t be sexy, and if someone does find it pretty, then that’s not because of the disability, it’s despite it.

Obviously, there are grey areas here, and each individual can (and is) judged to be beautiful, desirable, and every other positive adjective by individual people. But finding one disabled person gorgeous doesn’t a perfect society make. There need to be some HEFTY changes when it comes to what ‘society’ and individuals understand disability to mean because for pretty much all of history, it’s equalled a mistake that we should ignore and just wait until it dies (or kill it before it lives).

So…how did it feel to write this, when I was sort of writing about myself? Well, it wasn’t great to hear that disabled women are far more likely to experience abuse (psychological and/or physical) within romantic or sexual relationships than able-bodied women. Nor did it feel amazing to read countless experiences of disabled people like being asked to leave restaurants because their appearance might put people off their food, or being persistently pushed to the side and dismissed as irrelevant and pointless. It also almost brought me to tears in the library to read women say that it’d been easier for them to tell people who’d assumed that they couldn’t have children because of their disability that they were right when they weren’t actually right because they could have kids, but the support for disabled women just isn’t there since everyone assumes that they can’t have kids anyway and if they can, then they shouldn’t in case they pass their disability on. But again, that’s not even scratching the surface.

Disabled people aren’t the weak, infirm victims history and modern culture paints us out to be and there are so many examples of fulfilled, happy lives with a disability. However, I share the sentiment that I read basically all of the disabled community expressing, in that the worst of the ‘struggles’ I’ve already had and the ones I’ll continue to have aren’t because of my Spina Bifida, they’re because this world is doing its absolute best to ignore me until I croak.

The thing is though, I’m a loudmouth who’s got a loooot of years left and I plan on making people talk about this because, regardless of whether you’re disabled or not, it has everything to do with you. I hope that in some small way, my blog or whatever else I do in the future can contribute to disabled people actually being listened to and valued because we deserve your attention.

If I can manage that, then that’s a win really innit?

P.S.

Can we all pls manifest that I get a good grade on my diss lol IMAGINE

Peace to Ukraine

1st Mar 20221st Mar 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Every day, devastating things happen across the globe; some make the news for a few days, whilst others go completely unspoken of because public news stories only ever last as long as people’s attention spans – which, if you need clarification, isn’t very long. But at the minute, if you’re in Europe, then pretty much the only thing being shown by news channels is the Ukrainian-Russian War, and because I know that there’s no way of telling how long Ukraine will keep the attention of the continent, it only felt right that I say something on a platform where I know that some people will listen.

Right now, I’m being reminded of the extent of my privilege as a white, English, young woman because I’ve never known what it is to have friends or family in a country suffering persecution and war. But this time is different. I worked in Ukraine for 2 months in 2019, and for 3 weeks in the summer just gone, so whilst I may only know this country on a very small scale, it’s frightening to be texting friends who’re hearing bombs and hiding in metro stations when just 6 months ago we were sitting and laughing together, as they taught me Ukrainian and teased me about my accent.

The concept of invasion by a foreign power is not something many Brits have any understanding of, given that for centuries this nation was the threat and not the other way around; conveniently protected by oceans. This has largely meant that we can’t fathom what it would be like to live in a country where you’re never safe from invasion. We don’t really have the cultural capacity to imagine what it’s like to be told that you’re not what you thought you were, that the language you speak is no longer allowed, or that your home is now not the safest place to be. Hence, I can’t truly be an empath for my Ukrainian friends right now – no matter how much I might want to – but what I can do is draw as much attention to their voices as possible.

This isn’t a time to be passively ‘upset’ about what you’re seeing on the news, because as much as feeling sad or frightened is totally valid right now, my friends need more than that: they need something tangible.

So, listen to what the Ukrainian people are asking for and donate to their armed forces, go to a protest where you live, and keep talking about how blatantly wrong it is that these imperialist actions are still able to happen in the 21^st century. Even if I couldn’t put faces and personalities to this crisis, what’s happening in Ukraine right now is an unforgivable violation of human rights, which should never have been allowed to go as far as it already has. This historical event isn’t unprecedented, and it isn’t something unique to Ukraine. But surely, this happening so close to home should emphasise how people need to actually learn from history, rather than ignore it and then hopelessly repeat it until we all kill each other.

My words don’t feel sufficient right now, but they’re the best I can give to help my friends. Thus, I hope for them, that the rest of the world pulls through and that this insanity can end soon so that they’re not robbed of anything else.

All my love to you, and peace to Ukraine.

Be my Valentine

14th Feb 202214th Feb 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

It’s Valentine’s Day, and I’ve thought long and hard about how I want to address that. Earlier in the week, I’d toyed with not mentioning it at all and just posting something else I’d written; I thought about how I don’t want the only two themes of my posts to be relationships or my disability, even though I know that those are the topics my readers gravitate towards. But Valentine’s Day is a big deal for lots of people (whether they want it to be or not), since everyone is so aggressively brainwashed to believe that we each need a romantic relationship to experience true happiness or success and that this is the time when we get to show off that happiness and success. Or, we get to not, and then have it implied that we should be sad about that.

I remember when I was about 18, talking to my mum about boyzz, and saying that I thought the reason I’d had disappointing experiences was because I trust people too easily. She scoffed at that, asked what I meant, and said ‘you don’t trust anyone’. That makes her sound really brutal – she’s not brutal, but she is honest, and she made me realise that I like to tell myself that just because I’m extroverted and kind, that that equates to me being super trusting of others. Except, what she said to me when I was 18 remains true as I type this as a 22-year-old: romantically, I don’t trust lads as far as I could throw them.

This lack of trust isn’t founded in some intense trauma; I might have had some bad luck in romance so far, but I’m fortunate to have never suffered that badly from it. Honestly, the worst thing that’s happened to me in that arena is that the very few lads I was really interested in have hidden me. The first boy I ever really liked actively kept me a secret, by asking me to do things like turn my Snapchat maps off if I went to his house so nobody knew I was there, he’d never post me on his story like he would when he was seeing other girls, and he’d only be out in public with me if it suited him. Then there were the other couple of crushes who preferred a kiss behind closed doors and us to never mention it again.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: all of that’s awful and I don’t seem like someone to stand for that ridiculously toxic behaviour with the things I say in these blogs. You’re right about both of those things. I tolerated all of that sh*t when I was younger because it was subtle, I was desperate to be a part of the romantic relationship world, and we don’t always practice what we preach when we’re in the situation.

If I were to describe how I’d feel about being in a relationship now though, I honestly think that my main feeling would be terror. (I laughed when I typed that though, so don’t read this as if I’m crying about it.) I guess I’m scared of being with someone because I have absolutely no idea what that’d look like in my life: I’ve seen others do it, but I don’t know who I’d be in that context. So, the prospect of that degree of new experiences and emotions is ridiculously exciting, yet I can’t help but be scared of it as well.

I think that Valentine’s Day is a funny one because it’s nauseatingly commercialised, and it’s one day of the year when people seem to be obnoxiously happy or obnoxiously bitter or ambivalent about the whole thing. We all know that in the grand scheme of things it matters very little if you get a bit of cardboard through the door saying ‘be my Valentine’ or not, but at the same time, many of us can end up feeling pretty low when the 14th February is like any other day. That’s just because we’re human, and we want to experience love.

So, even though we know Valentine’s Day is pretty pointless, be as obnoxiously happy or sad or anything in between as you want. Plus, it’s Pancake Day soon!

She loves me, she loves me not

25th Jan 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Recently, I’ve noticed a change in myself when it comes to how I approach friendships with other young women. As some of you may know, I grew up alongside three older brothers, and have always had a close relationship with my dad. This isn’t to say that my mum and I aren’t close, because she’s undoubtedly one of my best friends, still, I’ve always felt more comfortable in the company of men.

All four of us were raised as feminists and were encouraged to show appreciation and love for the successes of individuals regardless of their gender. Yet, my parents could only do so much when it came to raising children in a society built on thousands of years’ worth of patriarchal ideas. So the fact is, that when I went to school and I socialised with kids outside of my home environment, I found myself experiencing way more grief when it came to my friendships with girls compared to those I experienced with boys. For instance, I could type page after page of stories of when I’d been friends with a girl for a long time then all of a sudden she had decided she didn’t like me for some reason or another, and boom: the bitching starts, everyone’s crying, friendship over.

Hence, I find myself walking into rooms full of all types of people, and the ones I feel the most intimidated by – without a shadow of a doubt – are the cis heterosexual women. Especially ones in a big group. But a lot of the time, I’m not intimidated because I don’t think that I would like them, it’s because I figure that the second I open my mouth and show myself as confident, self-assured, articulate, or (god forbid) comfortable around cis heterosexual men, these women won’t like me. I just can’t be arsed with the judgemental stares.

Only, I fucking LOVE women. I am one ffs. But society and its patriarchy are so unbelievably divisive that the second we’re away from those we love, and even occasionally whilst we’re with those we love, women are taught to rip each other to absolute shreds. We’re taught to judge, and distrust, and hate each other so much that sometimes we can’t help but subconsciously give in to the misogyny. As much as we raise our friends up for being confident and loving themselves, it’s not always easy to carry that approach into every situation. Plus, women can and are really awful to each other sometimes, so it’s not always easy to like every one.

However, the main point I want to make in this week’s blog, is that all women should stop being so distrusting of one another just because of the fact that we’re female; doing so doesn’t help anyone. My friendships with the women in my life now are some of the closest, most colourful, joyful relationships I will ever have, and I think it a shame that sometimes I might have accidentally stopped others from developing because I’ve assumed things before I’ve asked any questions.

So, the moral of this story is: you’re not going to like everyone, but don’t let the reason you don’t like someone be because of their gender.

An Indelible Friend

Tag: friendship