Wheelchair Fashion: Spring Breakthrough
A few things happened this week that made me think about who I am as a blogger. Firstly Rachel of Happy Little Syllables listed me as one of her 5 favourite spoonie bloggers, and honestly I think my heart sunk a little bit. That is utter craziness, it is amazing to be recognised for my blogging, I was totally honoured & I still am but it kind of made me feel the way you do when you get praised for a piece of work you don't feel happy with. There was an essay I did in high school when I was trying to get through my A-Levels after I had developed M.E. (which I swear to goodness I could have done if they had just given me text books, coursework & left me too it rather than insisting I went to class & did exams) which I was not happy with. I used to be really good at essays but I just couldn't get this history essay to flow the way I wanted it to & I HATED my teacher & wanted to show him that I was still just fierce as I had always been. Eventually I ran out of spoons & had to hand it in as it was. I got an A for that essay & to this day that makes me want to scream & being one of Rachel's top 5 bloggers felt like that.
The second thing that happened was Season 8 of Drag Race. Now I don't know how many of you have been able to watch it so I am not going to give any spoilers but WOW! Drag Race is kind of my therapy, I love the idea of "we are all born naked and the rest is drag" and I really try to live that but drag is more than clothes, it's a persona, it's an energy & an openness... Season 7 was full of queens who were serving the drag race visual (some of them better than pretty much any other queen ever has) but there has to be more than that to make someone a drag QUEEN you know? When I'm watching season 8 & I'm seeing queens like Kim Chi, who are just as visual, you start to realise that you have to have the whole package.... I'm rambling massively, I'm trying to take you through my thought process I guess.
There is this one queen, Kim Chi, who is struggling to own her body & that's impacting on her drag & that, whilst I've learnt to own my body, I'm struggling to own my brain & that's been impacting on my blog. I've been focusing so much on my photography & how my looks because I hate what the M.E. has done to my brain & I'm scared that I can't match up to who I once was.
Fashionable & confident in front of a camera is someone who I have become so I don't have anything pre-M.E. that that person has to live up to. Seriously the girl I was in high school would have killed to be so happy in her skin & so confident in her style, even if that meant she had to use a wheelchair.
The person I am now though remembers the brain I used to be & I mourn her. I feel incredibly vulnerable trying to do anything verbal, or academic because it is so difficult for me now & more than anything else that reminds me how much I've lost. When I first started having problems with thinking & logic I could honest to goodness feel the spaces in my brain I had to think around to do things. My brain must be like a gosh damn assault course for thoughts at this point because it gets harder & harder all the time.
But that's not a reason not to try. If Kim Chi could turn out a dance challenge I can turn this out. So from now on I will try harder to be more than just a blog full of pretty pictures, I will try to be more open & chatty & I hope you will cope with any incoherency my I end up typing.
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