On my mind......

Hi,

This has been bothering me for a while- so here's a post about it. YAY!

I've said this before and I'll happily say it again - I despise being labelled an inspiration. 

At the moment I'm recovering from an operation on my foot and I'm not only in a cast and crutches, but also being carted in a wheelchair. If you know me, you know my annoyance at this and how at the moment my self-respect and esteem are rock bottom cause I'm sticking out like a sore thumb even more than usual. 

Some people (able-bodied I'm going to add) think that it's acceptable that because in the rehabilitation stage of the op that I need to be told that I'm a fighter or I'm an inspiration to encourage and lift my spirits  (cringe) no mate. I may be even more mobility impaired than usual - but it's my leg that's messed up - not my brain.   No matter what state I look like I'm in - I'm not going to sit around and be inspiration porn. I'm like any of my friends, just that it seems that whoever upstairs decided to mess my body up a little and I'm left with a pretty crappy right side- no big deal I function perfectly well. 

I feel the phase 'inspiration porn' sum up these last few weeks pretty well. I'm exposed and people are watching and what's even worse is that they are getting a kick out of patronising me, they don't realise they are but, it the simplest of terms they are sort of turning me into an object of inspiration to make themselves feel great about their own lives. 

It's exactly the same thing when on fb you see someone run with prosthetic legs and the caption says 'what's your excuse?' Making the reader place the PWD as a super human when most likely  all they wanted to do was go for a run like anyone else!

The worse thing is that I know everyone around me who doing this is thrilled with me for 'persevering' and 'overcoming obstacles' and are telling me this all with good intentions but it just makes me want to curl up in a ball and hide - I just want to be treat the same as any one of my peers - is that so much to ask?

This post isn't about every person I know - so don't freak out if you think it's you. Actually to be fair it's about nobody outside of school really so yeah most of you who read it are fine

Byeeeeeeee