This is a subject that I
thought I would never write about once, let alone twice. However,
without meaning to, the blog post ‘introducing’ you to my hand
aka disability has become one of our most popular blogs. It also pops
up when you begin to search Google for ‘what wegan did next’.
Therefore it seems to be a topic that many people are intrigued
about; whether that’s just a result of general intrigue to know
what all the fuss about it I do not know. What has arisen out of it
was something that I was not expecting at all… and that’s
messages from our followers who also have a disability. Not for one
minute did I think that by sharing a part of me to the world that I’m
not very confident about, that it would in fact give others
confidence about their own disability; whatever it may be. So I want
to thank all of you for confiding in me and for being so brave. It
means more to me than you can possibly know. I don’t think I could
ever fully express it, but please know that it truly touches my
heart.
It’s amazing how far I
have come over the past few years. I can remember at the age of 18
crying when professionals had to look at my hand for assessment
purposes. I remember at the age of 23 of wanting to go hide in a hole
when I was having to pack my groceries away in Tesco and was
conscious of being too slow for the ever growing line. Feeling
frustrated on my 10 minute walk home from said grocery shop with too
many heavy bags and struggling to make it up the hill. Now that I’m
25 going on 26, I notice more and more the frustrations I have as a
result of my disability. There are still times when I’m more
annoyed by it than ever before. When I can’t use the weights at the
gym, or do the same activity as everyone else in the circuits fitness
class we regularly attend. My right shoulder getting tired from
driving with one hand, and not being able to drink my take away
Starbucks along my journey for fear of crashing the car- or simply
taking my hand off the wheel to scratch my head! I still get upset by
it, oh yes. I know that there are many out there with far more
disability, and they cope amazingly. I’m in awe of those people.
However I’m still amazed at how far I have come. That I can write
this post without crying. Or that I can write it at all. It feels
good. I’m still scared to put this part of me out there. I’m
still waiting for the coward anons with their hateful words (although
Whitney will still beat them up, with a team of you out there by the
sounds of things). I can handle anyone saying negative comments about
my sexual orientation. I cannot handle it about my hand. However, one
lovely lady said to me recently when I confessed this- that it is
worth a few hateful anons in order for the good to come out of it; to
be an inspiration to others. It’s something I thought I never would
be.
I’ve always strived to
change the image of lesbians as being feminine, although it appears
that I have inadvertently become an image for something else- a girl
who is like everyone else and just so happens to have a disability.
I’ve never embraced this part of me, and I still do not yet fully.
I admire, and I’m slightly jealous, of people like Sarah Herron.
Born with only one fully formed arm, she rejects being labelled as disabled (as
do I, though I do say I have a disability as opposed to being
disabled) and she absolutely flaunts her fabulous self- arm
and all. As you can tell, I still hide my hand from my pictures and
videos and this is the first time fully posting pictures with my disability. Perhaps one day I can get better with the visible side of
things, but until then- this is a big change. A feeling of pride- of
realising I have managed to make the most of what I’ve got and at
least being able to write it.
source |
Oh and by the way… I
never fully introduced you to my hand properly….
Introducing you to…
Turns out, a lot of
people actually have a name for their disability and since I can ever
remember, it has always gone by the name of Handy! It’s how my
family and wife refers to it (though Whitney tries to claim it’s a
‘she’ not ‘it’ or ‘he’). I don’t feel comfortable
labelling it as ‘it’, ‘he’, or ‘she’- just Handy!
Love