I Don’t Have A Face

Have you ever waked past a window or a mirror and been surpised by your reflection? Shocked by your own face? Like somehow in the time between when you brushed your teeth at the bathroom mirror and now, you entirely forgot you had a face at all, let alone what it is supposed to look like? I always thought it was normal to be confused by your reflection. I thought it was normal to look in the mirror and think, “That’s not my face.”

Now I’m an Amputee G*d D*mn You

Our class discussion from the other day has me thinking. How do we talk about the US’s responsibility in producing disabilities through wars abroad (both in our own veterans and in residents of the countries that serve as the battlegrounds) without implying that disabled people are undesirable or useless?

Dodging Glances on the Train

So today we’re going to talk about my fun times with mental illness, since it’s the reason this blog post is late. Yay.

I didn’t plan on getting too personal for this blog; my list of topic ideas is mostly cultural critique. I’m sure I’ll come back to that list for later posts and even save some of them to put up on my own blog(s) eventually. Right now I need to process some meta before I can get back to doing the thing.

Namaste

Recently, I have started going to yoga classes at the RAC twice a week with my roommate and one of my suite mates. After going to a few sessions, I realized how much yoga makes me aware of my body in different ways.

First class: I walk into the room where the class is held, and I see a slew of medium-height, slender girls (and a few guys) with perfectly toned bodies who gracefully rolled out their yoga mats and sat down and stretched their perfectly formed muscles.

#treatyoself.

“Treat yo self” was started by Parks and Recreation (the best show ever) but has evolved into a larger cultural trend. It’s a widely used hashtag on instagram and twitter. The idea behind treat yo self on the show is one day a year, two of the characters treat themselves to all the shopping, spa treatments, and other pamperings they want, without shame or regret for the price or excess. While it’s a fun (and funny) plotline of one episode, it’s also a strangely poignant idea.

I was invisible, but I am not that girl anymore

I have to write once more for this blog for my grade. I’m highly motivated by grades, so despite feeling as though I have nothing to say, here I am, typing. I thought maybe I’d write about how we adjust to our unique bodily abnormalities (I don’t love this word, but I’m at a loss for another). I thought about sharing my husband’s experience of processing the bodies of fallen soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, the forced emotional detachment he took on as body after body found its way on a table before him, waiting to be readied to head home in a plain wooden box, back to the states and no doubt a family that would never recover their loss. I thought about sharing the moment my friend, whose son died an hour after birth, told me she can’t bear to hold sleeping babies because it feels too much like holding a dead baby, and how that statement, so matter-of-fact for her, knocked the wind out of me and ripped a hole in my heart for her, right beside the one that grew as her belly swelled with the baby we both knew wouldn’t survive. Somehow, none of these felt like things I wanted to share. And as I stared at the screen, thinking, “I have nothing to say,” I recalled (with the help of some online diary entries) a time in my life when I had the reverse problem: so, so much to say, and no one to listen. And I knew. Despite how very little (very, very little) I want to share this story about myself, I need to. I owe it to my own slow recovery, the future of my children, and the potential readers who’ve maybe been here too. So, here we go.

*Deep breath* *Deep breath*

I don’t generally ascribe labels to myself (they are relentlessly negative), but most people who know feel comfortable placing “emotional” over my picture. It’s a fair assessment. As long as I can remember, I’ve been an emotional girl/woman. I cry a lot, sometimes for justified reasons (see above), sometimes because I’m easily overwhelmed by emotions. I hurt a lot, and for me, emotional pain is easily manifested physically. In times I’ve had my heart broken, I have felt an ache in my chest that made it hard to breathe. It is this essential truth about me that led me down the path of self-injury. And this truth that kept me under its weight for over 10 years. If you need a trigger warning, consider yourself warned. There won’t be images, but this will probably hurt. 

Peace?

(Possible trigger warning for rape subject/sexual assault)

  

Over the past few years I’ve been toying with the idea of joining the Peace Corps.  So far I’ve received mixed reviews on whether or not it’s the right thing to do.  Some say it’s a government funded semester abroad-a vacation for privileged white kids to fulfill whatever fascination or desire they have to dig wells and live in poverty for 27 months.

Coping with Anxiety

I have suffered from anxiety for as long as I can remember. The telltale tightening of my chest and racing of my heart are a part of my life that I have come to accept. I have grown used to the fact that new situations will seem terrifying and I will constantly have to replay every aspect of what could possibly go wrong before I do anything new. But I have also been able to come up with certain coping strategies to deal with this anxiety.

Comic by Natalie Dee

**Disclaimer: These suggestions are short-term solutions, and should not be taken in lieu of doctor’s orders or prescriptions**

I Miss Summer (Winter Is Coming)

“Oh shit,” I yell, “I need to make a blog post!” I grab a computer, sit down and open up a document.

I can’t think of one intelligent thing to say.

Yes, this is a post that is going up now. I have an idea of what I want to say now. Before, when I thought about it, I didn’t know what to put here. Me, disabled? There’s no way. I get out of bed on time every morning, I make breakfast, I go to school, I do things around the house, I work, take care of the animals… There’s no way I’d ever classify my constant state of movement as ever being disabled.

Faking Disabilities

I was reading the news the other day and came across an article that got me so angry. A man had been using the medical condition of epilepsy to get out of paying for his expensive meals. Luckily he got caught but his punishment is a very small punishment; a slap on the hand if you will.

The reason why this story got me so riled was because of the fact that my mother has been living with epilepsy for 26 years.She has to deal with the repercussions of her disability daily. For someone to mock and mimic an invisible disability is a despicable act. She has had to recently stop driving because her seizures have gotten so bad. Her seizures have taken a toll on her memory slightly so the small task of reminiscing becomes a difficult task of the realization that her disability is becoming more and more relevant each time we talk.

The man who decided it is acceptable to skip out on paying for a meal by faking a seizure makes me sick. It is disgusting and I wish he could understand epilepsy more in depth; this disability is no joking matter. Since he used the disability to his benefit, it makes me worried for my mother. If she has a seizure in the grocery store, restaurant, and any other public place, will people be less likely to help her if they think she is faking. I hope that if people see someone having a seizure they can recognize it and stay by that persons side until they come out of it. I hope that this mans acts did not make people want to turn a cold shoulder to a person actually having a seizure.