A few days ago I was kindly nominated by The Invisible Vision Project for the Flawesome Award, an award created by Sophia Ismaa, to be awarded to bloggers by bloggers who have overcome their personal flaws, and used them for good in their writing. I was incredibly flattered by the nomination, not least because this now makes me a 6-time award-winning blogger after only 2 years of Diary of a Disabled Person.
In order to accept the reward, you are required to acknowledge the award’s creator, Sophia Ismaa, and also the blog who nominated you, in my case the Invisible Vision Project. You must then list three flaws and demonstrate how you turned them into strengths, before nominating another 10 bloggers for the award.
It took many hours of intense thinking to come up with three personal flaws, as they are so few and far between. Nevertheless, I persisted for the sake of my art, and managed to come up with the following:
I’m reluctant to compromise.
There is an old idiom that says “You can tell a Yorkshireman, but you can’t tell him much”. Now I’m no man but I’m very Yorkshire, and while I tend to dislike stereotypes, this is one which cannot be denied. As my parents and now my husband will tell you; I’m really fricking stubborn.
This little quirk has caused much trouble in the past, predominantly when trying to forge friendships with peers and colleagues, and also when it comes to knowing when to relent and be grateful for what I had already achieved.
However, there are also plenty of occasions when compromise isn’t an option. Accessibility is one such example. There is no halfway-house with accessibility; either something is accessible or it is not. This extends beyond simply having ramps, lifts, toilets, & hearing loops etc., but actually having them available for use, not blocked, not impeded, and not hidden behind a staircase that someone else must climb to get the assistance you need. Something as simple as blocking an access route or forgetting to put out the ramp is all that is needed to render something inaccessible. I’ve tried being nice with the people who do this, but my protests are ignored. It’s only when I put my wheels down and refuse to compromise that I am listened to, and I know that this is the same for many other disabled people.
I don’t take things as seriously as I should.
If something goes wrong my instinct is to laugh about it. This is fine when, say, a pigeon flies into the window and you spill your drink, but not so much when something goes really wrong. It frustrates those around me no end when I simply don’t recognise certain situations are wholly inappropriate for a joke. It can make topics such as moving house or changing jobs an absolute nightmare for anyone working with me, as instead of getting the paperwork done, I’m sat in the corner mocking the situation.
Fortunately, I have been able to put my ability to laugh at anything and everything to good use. I have only coped with my long-term health issues because I have been able to laugh at them, including when I needed emergency surgery to remove my gall bladder (although laughing really did hurt then). Similarly, I have used it to educate others about life with disability, and to normalise and humanise disability to make it easier for others to cope with. There’s nothing like making a corny pun about the wheelchair to set a stranger at ease, meaning they can focus on the conversation we’re having, instead of panicking about what they should say to me.
I don’t like to let my feelings show in public.
The general public’s reaction to seeing a wheelchair user out and about is to ignore me so hard that I know they’ve noticed me, and that they’re simply pretending I don’t exist to avoid an awkward interaction. Sometimes people will physically push past you while still pretending they hadn’t noticed me, despite the fact that deciding to push past is a decision made based upon the fact that they’ve seen me. On other occasions I get comments from strangers, most commonly about how fast “it” goes, and whether I’ve got a licence to drive it. From time to time, I simply get blank stares.
Perhaps though, if I showed my displeasure at such occurrences, the public would take note. Perhaps they’d realise that their words and actions are upsetting, and try to make changes to their behaviour around disabled people. Perhaps they would take notice of all that disabled people report on social media, and to the news.
This characteristic, though, serves to protect me. If I stopped to challenge everyone who made my life more difficult than it already is, I would never get anywhere or do anything. I would also be exposing myself to torrents of verbal abuse, and even on occasions threats of physical violence. Keeping a stony face, helped out by headphones that can block out the comments, has allowed me to go about my daily business and live my life.
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Once again, I’d like to thank The Invisible Vision Project for their kind nomination, and without further ado, here are my nominations:
A Backpack, A Chair, and A Beard.
My Fitness Journey with Fibro.
My congratulations to you all.
Diary of a Disabled Person. 