Morning comes and I'm already stumbling. I fall down. I can feel the tension in my muscles. My mouth won't close and I sop the floor with a puddle of saliva that has left my mouth. I start to come down the stairs and my less-than-graceful attempt in landing on the floor to crawl down the stairs has me cutting my elbow and bruising my knees. Even though I am crawling, I still have to make sure that I don't spaz and fumble down the stairs. Fatigue sets in and I am reminded that I have spoons (like every other person dealing with a chronic illness or disability does) because of my cerebral palsy and bipolar disorder. I am reminded that 90-something percent of the time (I can only achieve this when I'm manic), I cannot achieve the utter perfectionism and energy that my driven personality warrants and is supposed to have. That even though that internal perfectionism is nagging me endlessly and is saying, "Push yourself, push yourself!" I have to listen to the CP and bipolar instead that say, "Don't please Perfectionism, you can't handle it and neither can we!" That if I go beyond my limits on one thing, I won't be able to do anything else for the rest of the day or maybe even the rest of the week, yet my physical therapist is demanding that I try harder, and my classroom teachers expect me to put my blood, sweat, and tears into every assignment that they give me.
Why wouldn't they though, right? But see, here's the thing: statistically and scientifically, patients with cerebral palsy use up three to six times more energy than able-bodied people do. It's kinda like going for hikes in stilettos all day long when you can't stand up straight. And the harder and longer those hikes get the more your posture, balance, coordination, wherewithal, capacity, and stamina (which were already pretty awful to begin with anyway) drain and disintegrate. But even professionals like my physical therapist, who are aware of the excessive energy output and calorie burning do not exactly take their knowledge of this into very much account at all, unfortunately.
I'm sick of getting yelled at for things I hate as much as the person who's yelling at me for the specific thing, i.e. having an "accident" or diving into a depressive episode or falling over and popping a zit. Do you think *I* chose this? Do you think *I* like these bitches of disorders. Hell no. I have no idea why anybody on the face of this Earth would think that I had any sort of control over the things they obviously know I loathe.
Take a second and think. Walk around in my shoes. That's right. Walk around in those stilettos, because you need to realize that everyday I'm just glad if I don't collapse into a heap of pain and bruises, both physically and mentally. And first and foremost, you need to realize that saying I'm "such a strong person" and you don't know "how I do it everyday" but then yelling at me for knowing my limits as a person with a physical disability (as well as a learning disability with math and processing speed) and a mood disorder, than that is not compatible with the quotes above.
It's not "comforting" in the least bit to get a whopping heap of too much sympathy, that is, quite frankly, repugnant and explicit, or to treat me as if I were some kind of almighty god. Because news flash, I am human. Humans have limits, feelings, pressures, and challenges, and the more we get used to our individual challenges, the more we learn to cope with them. So saying that stuff about me being "such a strong person" is like me saying you're such a strong person when your dad left your mom at 10 days old. (10 days old is when I developed my cerebral palsy) You've never known anything different and you've learned to cope with the slightly disconcerting family dynamic you've been given. Does that mean you don't ever feel spite towards your estranged father sometimes? Does that mean you don't want to just throw everything away more often than not? Absolutely not. But you've learned to cope with it. That's what I want you to know.
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