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.

Forget your troubles, c’mon, get happy

26th Sep 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hot (and slightly insecure) girl summer

8th Aug 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 3 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They ain’t all bad

4th Jul 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I won’t be told

9th May 2023 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

When I was nearing the end of my school years and it was reaching the point where I had to decide what I was going to do after my A-Levels, I quickly came to the conclusion that I wanted to take a break from education and go see some of the world on my own.

As children, my brothers and I were always encouraged to learn as much as we could about societies – historical and contemporary – and to take every opportunity to explore, so the idea of travel was never particularly daunting to any of us I don’t think. When I told my parents that I wanted to do the whole solo travel gap year thing, they were hugely supportive, but my Spina Bifida did mean that the prospect of me traveling to, and knocking about on my own in a different country was a little more complicated than when my older brother did it a couple of years before me.

I started working and saving for my travels when I was 16, and as soon as I left school, I was working three jobs to fund all of my trips because I wanted the year before university to be entirely my own, and I didn’t want my parents to feel any pressure to financially support me through it when they had their own bills to pay, or their own holiday to save up for. More than this though, I wanted to show myself that I could look after my disability no matter where I was in the world, or what I was doing. I’d fought against it for years and had subsequently landed myself in a wheelchair for periods of time, so in my mid-teens, I’d had this niggling feeling that maybe I was going to have to limit myself because of my Spina Bifida after all. Maybe, everything my parents and family had taught me about me being able to do whatever I wanted to didn’t matter, because maybe that kind of thinking just wasn’t practical if you wear callipers.

But I’m nothing if not stubborn, so I put the niggling feeling to the test by sending myself off to four different countries on my own. And do you know what, we not only managed it, we THRIVED. I lived in the jungle, hours away from any hospital; in the middle of a bustling city where all the signs are written in a script completely different from my native tongue; in a tent on a tiny private island surrounded by the Pacific Ocean where I washed my dishes in the sea, and I worked 17-hour days in the mountains where I was, in fact, constantly on my feet.

Since then, I’ve continued to travel on my own to new and beautiful places when I can – most recently, going to visit my parents in Rio de Janeiro. But what I want to emphasise is that when I take these trips, I do somewhat risk the condition of my feet. Before I went on my gap year, I remember the face of the doctor who’d seen me through three operations and more blisters and infections than I’d ever care to count, and it was one of total support because she knows who I am aside from my disability and that I was going to do it, but it was also one of ‘oh my god, this could end really badly’. And to be frank, there were moments during those trips that it wasn’t looking great. I mean, in South Korea, I was sending photographs of my feet to this doctor at home asking if I had an infection, then sitting in A&E in Seoul, communicating the nuances of my disability to a (very lovely) doctor using my amateur Korean language abilities. (It’s one thing to know how to ask for two glasses of wine and two bowls of bibimbap, and entirely another to explain diminished sensation from the knee down on both legs and scars from multiple tendon transfers…). But we managed it, I didn’t have an infection, and I was fine. Then when I was in Ukraine, I ended up crying in my room one day because I couldn’t work; my skin was looking like it was about to get a blister because I’d been working like crazy without my normal medical treatment in 30-degree heat for two months. Not a shock, but infuriating nonetheless. My colleagues (friends) told me to calm down, and one of the lads carried me to the evening activity on his back to save me from walking for the evening. Again, I managed it, and I was fine.

If you read my medical notes and the long lists of all the times my disability has kicked off, then you would probably think that I should stay off of my feet as much as possible. That there are so many things I can’t or shouldn’t do. So many places that I can’t or shouldn’t go. You’d think that the second I leave my car in England and get on a plane to a country where I’m going to have to walk far more than I ever would normally, I’m making the odds of me ending up in hospital with a cannula in my arm far more likely than if I was to just stay at home, sit on my backside, and go work in a call centre or behind a desk forever. And you’d be correct. But I won’t be told.

The words on those pieces of paper define my disability according to its worst moments, but my life is not that. I’m not that. At least, not all of the time. Sometimes I am in hospital with an infection – I was at the start of this year – except those moments don’t happen very often and nothing terrible has ever happened to my feet whilst I’ve been travelling because I am careful. It’s not just about putting all the practical things in place to take care of my feet whilst I travel though, it’s about sincerely believing that I can do it – regardless of what my medical notes say. Yes, my stubbornness has me taking flucloxacillin sometimes because I’ve walked too much and given myself a blister that has gotten infected, but it also sent me to the other side of the world when I was 19.

I am not stupid, I do my best to take care of my disability, but I was never good with someone telling me that I can’t or I shouldn’t just because I have Spina Bifida. So, I’m cool with never running a marathon but just because I can’t do one thing doesn’t mean that every other human experience is completely inaccessible. I just might have to consider a few extra things.

I ran away to the Ukrainian mountains

31st Aug 2021 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

As many of you have seen on social media, I went back to Ukraine this summer to work as a summer camp counsellor for a month, and if any of you are prOper big-time stalkers (*cough* I mean, ‘followers’…) of my work, then you’ll know that this wasn’t my first rodeo: I did the same job at the end of my year abroad two years ago. And what’s funny about coming back from doing anything for an extended period, is that people ask you how it was: some ask you out of politeness when they’re not really that interested, and others ask you because they truly want to know. But then when it comes to it, there’s no way you can effectively concentrate a month’s worth of experiences into one conversation, so you’re left with the ‘oh yeah, it was really fun thanks’.

I wanted to go back to Ukraine for two main reasons. The first was that I wanted to go to a different country because I like seeing other places, and because this year pretty much everyone on the planet has had the urge to leave their home country ever since being literally confined to it by law. The second reason related to the first, but was distinct in that I wanted to go somewhere else because for so long I felt stuck. I’d thoroughly enjoyed my second year at university but a pandemic, online learning, and the basic fact that I don’t really enjoy my degree made it so that I had this feeling that I was waiting around for something to happen only I had no idea what that something was. So I guess if we want to psychoanalyse it, I was eager to go back to do something I’d done during my year abroad since that was the time that I’d felt the surest of who I was and what I was doing.

The pandemic threw everyone for a loop, we know this, but my feeling lost and directionless at times can’t be wholly attributed to Ms Rona: it must also be a side-effect of our school systems telling us all the way through our adolescence that we need to know every step of our lives at least five years in advance. If you don’t plan, and if you don’t know, then you’ve done something wrong, you’re failing at adulting.

For the longest time, I knew I wanted to go to university and study Japanese Studies. So, then when I got there and realised that not only did I not enjoy it, but that the teaching had beaten my confidence down so much that I started to genuinely believe that I’m a bit stupid, it came as I nasty shock. And though I’d never really thought about it before, I now acknowledge that when situations or people stress me out, make me feel embarrassed or upset, I prefer to just run away and hide so I have time to make sense of it in my head. Hence the trip to the Carpathian mountains to fuck about doing dance routines and eating grechka with some kids for a month. Grechka, by the way, is this buckwheat thing and whilst I love some Ukrainian foods, grechka isn’t for me…it’s just that consistency in between needing to chew it and not needing to chew it…kinda gross. But anyway, back to the analysis of emotions.

I’m not about to criticise the part of my personality that likes to hide sometimes, because I don’t see why we need to change every little inconvenient part of ourselves, but I will say that I need to be less hard on myself right now. Yes, once you leave school and move out, you become an adult and there are lots of responsibilities associated with that, however, that process doesn’t automatically come with knowing exactly what you’re going to be doing at every stage of your life. Therefore, we should start cutting ourselves some slack for feeling a little lost sometimes. Especially considering we just lived/are living through an iNtErNAtiONal pANdeMIC.

On that note, coming back from Ukraine to see people no longer afraid of standing near strangers, of hugging, of going to a festival, of dancing in a bar, has really helped with dampening all those intense anxieties building up in me for the past 18 months. Let’s not be silly and assume that the stresses have completely gone – I’m still a languages student with no real semblance of a year abroad – bUT (!) as everything relaxes, and musicians release new music, life feels like it’s moving again. And thank fuck for that.

Corona, you’ve turned my world upside down

22nd Mar 202023rd Mar 2020 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I guess the only thing I can really speak about this Sunday, is how the corona pandemic has affected my life. But don’t worry people, I haven’t got it. Or at least, I don’t think I have, seeing as people my age can just have it without knowing that they do…

But I’m pretty sure I haven’t got it…………………….? mOViNG oN

Living at University, my friends and I were all in a bubble where the world didn’t really seem to affect us much. The biggest excitement of our days was the prospect of a night out or any other silly s*** we could get up to. So when we woke up to be told that our University was going to shut early, and that we should take all of our stuff home with us just in case we didn’t come back for third term, we were all pretty taken aback. To add to that weirdness, I realised that I was going to have to call up KLM to ask them to move my flight because ever since February, my home is Peru. Which in itself is a totally new and bizarre concept.

I’d woken up ready to have a very relaxing day: I was going to watch some Netflix, eat some food, maybe shave my legs (Wild. I know), then go get drunk for my friend’s birthday. But at 2pm I realised that instead of this crazy Friday I’d had planned, I needed to speed-pack a suitcase and drive home to Yorkshire, ready to catch a flight to Peru the following morning. Complete madness.

Then when I was navigating through the airports, I was surrounded by people doing exactly the same thing. Some of them were pretty jovial and nonchalant about it, whilst others were complete nervous wrecks. The girl sitting next to me on the flight almost lost it when she spotted someone lying horizontally across the seats with a protective mask covering her mouth. I managed to calm her down by telling her that that girl lying down was severely disabled, and had come onto the plane in a wheelchair: she wasn’t dying of corona virus.

I’ve never had anyone look at me with such gratitude as she did once I’d told her that. *eye roll*

After over 24 hours, I made it here a day before the borders shut, and have been living in a state of national emergency ever since. What, you might ask, does that entail? Well! Let me tell you! It means that: if you leave your apartment for anything other than to go to the shop or to walk your dog, you’ll get arrested and fined £2000. So, since I don’t really fancy being locked up in a Peruvian prison surrounded by people speaking a language that I don’t, I haven’t been outside since I arrived. I feel it’s the most logical choice.

In all seriousness, the modern world has never experienced something like corona, and it’s led to a lot of things being cancelled. These cancellations has then resulted in a whole lot of sulking. And it’s 100% fine to sulk! I’m sulking about not having a summer term at University, and the idea of not seeing my friends for months. But just so we can help this thing end sooner and minimise the amount of people hurt by it, can everyone please just sulk at home? The sooner we sit in self-isolation, doing a jigsaw or playing monopoly, the sooner we’ll be able to get back to normal.

I’ve been in total lock-down for a week now and it’s really not that bad. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not lOVing it, and I’d really rather not, but sometimes we’ve got to do things we don’t want to do. So don’t be selfish, and just stay inside for a few weeks until this all blows over. Also, don’t be that idiot who freaks out and stockpiles food: you’re not actually living through The Day After Tomorrow.

Plus! At least through all of this chaos and weirdness, the planet is getting some time to breathe as we stop polluting and abusing it so much for a few months. That’s got to be good, doesn’t it?

2019

29th Dec 201930th Dec 2019 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

2019 has been the most influential year of my life, and it’s one that I’ll remember until I’m an old disabled lady, sitting in a comfy bed, complaining about the state of young people and their antics. Though, I kind of hope that I won’t do that last bit…unless it’s ironically…

Nepal was my first insight into what absolute bliss feels like. My favourite memory (of many) is sitting in a small pagoda in front of the monastery, on the side of a mountain, hidden by the jungle, as the sun was setting. I remember stroking the puppy sitting on my knee, 4 other dogs at my feet, and listening to the children singing their prayer in the temple to the background noise of all the other wildlife. I’m not religious at all, and I’m not really a spiritual person, but in that moment I completely understood why those monks chose to spend their lives in spaces such as that, away from the noise of the modern world. And no, I didn’t record it, since no recording on any device would’ve been able to capture it- but it’s always going to be in my head.

South Korea re-ignited my love for the Far East, and showed me that I can manage my disability on that side of the planet after all. The biggest indicator of this being the fact that I successfully spoke (broken) Korean in A&E of a hospital in Seoul, got myself some antibiotics, and didn’t have to fly home immediately. Oh, and I went on a date with a Korean policeman. Good times.

Fiji was the hardest of my trips. I had some points of bliss like Nepal – the most notable being singing to myself on a private island whilst washing dishes in the pacific ocean. It might not sound as sublime as how I described the scene in Nepal, but I liked the simplicity of it and I love the ocean, so it was perfect to me. But, I didn’t like all of my experiences in Fiji so I learnt how important, and possible, it is to make the best out of a disappointing situation.

Ukraine worked me harder than any of my travels, and it was some of the most fun I had this year. I have so many memories from those 2 months that it’d be too hard to pick a favourite. What that time taught me more than anything, was that I lOve people, and that I need to keep making friends from all over the world. As one of my wonderful American pals put it when we realised that we didn’t know when or if we’d have the chance to see each other again, I love knowing that you all exist somewhere in the world. I hope that you keep making people smile as much as you made me smile for those 2 months in the middle of the Carpathian Mountains.

This year I realised so much about myself and others whilst being in different countries, that when I came back I was able to appreciate everything in my native country so much more. To me, the Yorkshire hills are as beautiful as the Nepali mountains and the safety of being with people I’ve known forever, is just what I needed after all that newness. (That is a word btw, google it).

But overall, 2019 has taught me just how much I want to know about the world and everything in it. So I hope that the next 12 months bring me as many adventures as the last, and that next year’s post has as many happy memories in it as this one.

In my feels at Ukrainian Summer Camp

27th Oct 20195th Nov 2019 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 1 Comment

One thing I’m very proud of is the fact that I’m a West Yorkshire girl. We may have cold, rainy weather, and it might be constantly assumed that we drink tea or have some sort of superior authority when it comes to judging a Yorkshire pudding (tho the latter’s true tbf), and it might well be accurate that we struggle to spend money on anything. BUT, it’s because of these facts and many others that I love where I’m from. However, aside from that cheeky bit of patriotism, there are plenty of things about the Northern English psyche that I don’t love all that much.

The main one that was appropriate when it came to my time in Ukraine was our tendency to be emotionally guarded. I grew up in a family where sarcasm is encouraged, and through making digs (lovingly) at each other my siblings and I gained a thicker skin in preparation for the wider world. One consequence of this was that I, like many other Britons, have a tendency to take the mick out of anything that shows excessive enthusiasm or ‘deep’ emotions. By ‘deep’ I mean when you’re sitting with your group of friends and someone brings up the meaning of life, and because you’re English one of you responds with ‘that’s deep’ and you all laugh it off, then change the topic to something ‘lighter’.

A natural avoidance of topics requiring more emotional vulnerability such as this made life in a Ukrainian Summer Camp all the more alien to me. Our first week in the Carpathian mountains was a training week, where counsellors and English teachers got to know one another without any children running around. We played games every day, and brainstormed activities we could do with the kids, but then on an evening we’d sit and have conversations where everyone seemed to willingly bare their souls to strangers. Now I was struggling to get used to the fact that we actually had to learn dance routines for the kids to mimic for 15 minutes before EVERY meal, let alone that everyone would then have heavily emotional chats with each other before bed time…

The Yorkshire lass in me wanted to laugh and take the mick at so many points, but it became clearer that I was the minority in the room when it came to not wanting to publicly emote. It’s apparent in Europe, and from what I’ve seen the rest of the world, that those ‘deep’ conversations the English only seem to have when drunk or in therapy are standard dinner time chit-chat. It’s in this way, amongst others, that we play to our stereotype of being uptight and emotionally closed-off.

To be honest, I do like this characteristic of our culture to an extent. In my eyes, we privilege monumental emotions over minor ones. By this I mean that we don’t emote constantly, but (for want of a better phrase) save it for a big occasion. In this way, we don’t force our emotions onto people excessively, for fear of being branded a ‘downer’ or, in Yorkshire terminology, ‘a whinge’. That being said, this is definitely a toxic trait when it comes to mental health: the English have a real problem with internalising emotions and therefore allowing those feelings to overwhelm and isolate the individual. Through living in Ukraine surrounded by people of all nationalities (not exclusively European), and being in a hyper-emotional environment, I was encouraged to be a lot more vocal and in-tune with my own feelings. Life in a summer camp is effectively a hot box where everything you feel is heightened due to extreme levels of stress, responsibility and a whoooole lot of laughter.

In this week’s concluding paragraph – seen as I just can’t seem to get that A Level English Lit essay structure out of my bones- I basically just want to say that the English need to have some more ‘deep’ conversations. As a community, we need to make it clearer to each other that emotions aren’t scary or unusual. I’m not suggesting that everyone sits and has a cry with each other regularly, although an occasional cry is good for you. But some of the most valuable parts of summer camp for me, and others, was everyone leaving little notes for each other just to say thank you for leaving the art room tidy, or helping with an evening activity, or just to say I think you’re amazing and this is why. Ukraine showed me that when a group of people are almost completely emotionally vulnerable with one another, life is easier. We wound each other up and occasionally we argued, but overall I formed some of the closest friendships I’ve ever had in 2 months flat and laughed until I cried multiple times every day.

So next time someone wants to talk about something ‘deep’, humour it and get involved for a bit. It might be interesting and afterwards you’ll feel good. Plus, then when you want to lighten the mood and have a laugh with each other your relationship is going to be stronger, more genuine and so much more fun.

Culture shock in Fiji

20th Oct 201930th Nov 2022 by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Out of all of my trips, Fiji was an emotional roller coaster: there were a few moments where I almost spent all of my money on a plane trip home. Not due to the scenery being underwhelming, or the people unwelcoming, (definitely nOt the case) but because in many respects the country was so far away from everything I knew and expected.

Quick tip: don’t travel from the North of England all the way to the heart of the Pacific Ocean for 2 weeks. It’s faaaar too long a journey for such a short amount of time. That being said, it’s stunning so give yourself long enough to properly explore. Also make sure that you’ve got a hefty bank account so you can afford the island life: I didn’t have that much money, but I made the best out of it. I even had a wild Manta Ray swim past me in the Pacific Ocean (GAP YAHH)!!!!!

I’m hesitant to be completely honest about my experience in Fiji because I met some really great people there, many of whom I hope to see again. But my first week didn’t give me the same bliss I experienced in the second, on a private island surrounded by the ocean.

I spent the start of my trip helping in a local boys’ school as a teaching assistant, and went into it thinking that it might be similar to my experience in Nepal: it wasn’t. The children themselves were super sweet, but kids are always sweet, they can’t help it. What was more notable, was the underlying physical and emotional violence present within the school. Namely through the teachers in the school using corporal punishment. The class I was with was one of the youngest, and worst behaved, so I watched the teacher strike and verbally intimidate the kids regularly. This created an atmosphere with heightened physical violence where the boys would spend a lot of their break-times hitting each other during playtime. The first thing the teacher I assisted told me was to not get close (emotionally) to the children. I understood that she meant it on a disciplinary level: to create distance and respect between adults and children. But I can’t see how the way she went about it helped the children at all. It was clear to me that many of those who were misbehaving had learning difficulties or experienced physical violence at home, or both.

At this point it became very clear to me that there was very little I could do in that situation. I can’t describe how affecting it is to have a 6 year old child look you in the eye with tears in his eyes as his wrist or ankle is slapped with a wooden ruler, and not be able to do anything. But it comes down to the fact that as the intruder in the room, what right did I have to tell someone that an element of their culture was right or wrong? Some might say that I should have said something, but I didn’t see how that would have achieved anything but made it seem like I was a privileged white girl trying to push my Western views onto another culture. Instead, I tried very hard to stop the boys from doing things to provoke punishment. For those who fell behind in their work, I did my best to catch them up and for those who were about to do something mischievous, I pegged it across the room to try and stop them from doing it. I also allowed them to stand behind me and hug me when their teacher wasn’t looking, seeing as it was obvious that many were starved of positive physical contact.

I’m couldn’t really tell you my opinion of that teacher. On one hand, I watched her hit the kids, and that repulsed me. But then she also seemed like a hard-working, tough woman intent on ensuring that those children received a decent education. Spending time in that classroom, even for such a short time showed me that living in different cultures is not always easy. I have strong views on the subject of corporal punishment in schools as a result of my upbringing in the North of England. That teacher’s views were the polar opposite to my own, but then she had a very different upbringing to me. What is difficult to navigate in that situation, is to what degree I can express my opposition without reeking of western imperialist superiority.

I’m not sure how well I did in such a short time, but I like to think that those kids will remember the hugs I gave them and the parts of the alphabet I taught them.

An Indelible Friend

Tag: travel