This is not about creative writing but it's something I felt I had to share.
I experienced a shocking moment of ableism at the pool that I go to do my Hydrotherapy exercises at today!
While we were drying off and getting dressed, me in the disabled & family changing room and mum in the women's changing room, mum overheard a woman complaining about me. She said that I, an ambulatory wheelchair user, shouldn't be using the pool at all. Not just the disabled changing room, which is what I initially thought mum told me she said, but the entire pool area!
I can't believe some people can be so self-centred!
Between endo, tendinitis, easily tearing cartilage, and parenthood, some days i want to give up. But i can’t. I can’t go without knowing my children are happy, loved, fulfilled.
But it’s so. So. So hard. I don’t know how much more i can take
Be proud of me, I renewed my Learner's Driving Licence for the first time ever! I'm disabled, constantly grappling with chronic pain and fatigue, so to do that took a lot out of me.
Now, to sort out adapted driving lessons once I get my renewed licence. I... haven't driven since 2020 because of, first, "No Unnecessary Driving" during the pandemic, then, my condition worsening and so my no longer being able to drive an unadapted car. At the beginning of this year, I had an adaptations assessment, to which they gave me an adapted driving instructor's number, and I got my family's car adapted so I can use it too (because of this I had to send the DVLA my licence so they could check I'm safe to drive, which they then lost and had to issue me a new one for the 2 months left on it so that I could renew it).
The Perfectly Ordinary, Extra-Ordinary Life of Daisy-Mae
Daisy-Mae was a perfectly ordinary girl up until her sixteenth birthday, or perhaps it was the week before, depending on your perspective. She lived with her single mum and her much younger sister Jessica-Jae, who she often had to babysit, a perfectly ordinary family. She finished North Walsham High School with an even mixture of Cs, Bs and As, perfectly ordinary grades. She had a best friend Emma, who she was looking forward to attending Paston Sixth Form College with in Autumn, a perfectly ordinary aim. She dreamed of being a Primary School teacher one day, a perfectly ordinary dream.
Daisy-Mae was a perfectly ordinary girl, until she was not.
On her sixteenth birthday, Daisy-Mae was taken aside by her family before she left for her long-planned trip to Pizza Hut with Emma to celebrate it and told in no uncertain terms that she was a witch born of a long line of witches, which she found hard to believe and, in fact, didn’t believe, at first.
But no. Perhaps that was not when she stopped being perfectly ordinary. Or perhaps it was.
Let’s go further back.
The week before her sixteenth birthday, Daisy-Mae was walking her much beloved St. Bernard George Frederique the Third (although there was no first and second), he was as big as her when standing up on his hind paws and almost as old as her too, even though he was as sprightly as a dog half his age, in North Walsham Play Park when she toppled over nothing at all and fell flat on her face. It sounds funny (you’re welcome to laugh at her misfortune as long as you cry at it too) but what resulted from it was anything but. Daisy-Mae fell flat on her face but her faithful, old dog had no idea and kept on walking. On and on he trod and on and on he dragged her along as she futilely tried to pull herself back up to a stand.
“Georgie!” she yelled as a tuft of grass smacked her in the face. But George didn’t hear as he sniffed at the ground and continued walking.
The situation only worsened for her as her foot caught in the root of a yew tree growing just along the outskirts of the park and –
Pop!
Out went her hip.
It didn’t hurt. In fact, it felt strange. Daisy-Mae could feel her hip dislocate, although she hoped and prayed it was anything but that, she could feel the drag of her bones as they were pulled away from her cartilage. She made a strangled sound and it was at this that her faithful, old dog finally stopped.
He returned to her side and sniffed around her face in concern. He swept his big, slobbery tongue over her cheeks and nose affectionately and she ruffled his fur in reply. George Frederique the Third was a good boy.
As her body settled and realised it was no longer moving in two different directions, her hip pulled itself back together as it ought to be. So, in the end, Daisy-Mae suffered a partial dislocation a week before her birthday.
Rightly, she should have gone straight to the Accident and Emergency department at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. But Daisy-Mae was British born and bred and you know what they say about the British stiff upper lip; you stick it out and don’t complain (unless it is as a pastime, which is another British thing) so as not to bother anyone.
Tentatively, she drew herself to a stand, then a slow step forward, then a gentle walk and found she was OK. She rested a hand on her hip because it hurt frightfully but she reasoned that that was only normal really after what had happened (but what had happened?) and she surely only needed to RICE it – Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation – as you need to do for any sprain or strain. And surely, her muscles must be sprained or strained after such an ordeal, whatever it had been.
However, it was not to be. For, what Daisy-Mae didn’t know at no fault of her own was that she was born with a condition known as Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder (formerly known as Joint Hypermobility Syndrome). She had suffered from a constant ache in her back since she was twelve years old and had gone to see her doctor about it twice yearly. And yet her doctor, as often happens in our overdrawn healthcare systems these days, dismissed her concerns as nothing more than ‘growing pains’, even though she hadn’t grown an inch since she was, indeed, twelve. And people with Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder do not heal well.
That partial dislocation of her hip, her left hip she noticed belatedly, had created a rather large tear in her cartilage as it was pulled to-and-fro between her bones. A tear that sat right beneath all her muscles in her leg, the muscles which allow her to walk freely as much as anyone else. A tear that rubbed and rubbed and rubbed against those muscles, making them swell up, all red and painful, every single day for the rest of her life. And it would never ever heal. And it would only get worse.
(First, she would limp through it, until the intense pain was in both her legs and up her side, until they went numb and she fell down. Then she would use a walking stick or crutch to aid it, until the same. Then she would end up in a mobility scooter or wheelchair from it, although still ambulatory. And she would constantly, always, forever be fatigued.)
But Daisy-Mae didn’t know any of that yet.
-
This is the story of Daisy-Mae, a perfectly ordinary sixteen-year-old girl until the day she finds out she’s a witch or perhaps the day she becomes disabled. Daisy-Mae should have been overjoyed at finding out that she was a witch, that all the magic in the world was at her fingertips, but all she could think about was finding a way to heal her disability. And yet it was that witchcraft was not used for healing, more for prevention and protection. After all, why else do you think there are so many stories of crooked-nosed, hunchbacked witches leaning on canes from the olden days?
But Daisy-Mae would not be deterred, she would find a way to heal her disability, even though everyone said there wasn’t one. Because not finding a way simply wasn’t an option to her. She couldn’t live the rest of her life disabled. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
This is a story full of ableism, both internal and external, of friendship, of familial love, of acceptance and a little bit of magic.
Welcome to the Perfectly Ordinary, Extra-ordinary Life of Daisy-Mae.
-
Hello! I am Yuki White (@yukiwhitetm on Tumblr and AO3) and I wrote this little snippet of an original story (all in one sitting!). I based it on my own experiences as a disabled woman with Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder (HSD) and a Labral Hip Tear (the technical term for a tear in your hip’s cartilage), although mine is the right hip not the left and my accident was totally different to Daisy-Mae’s and I was twenty-one when it happened not nearly sixteen.
Did you know one in four people have Hypermobility? Many famous athletes do! But very few people suffer chronic pain and fatigue from it like I do.
My intention in writing this story is to highlight the difficulties of becoming disabled and that, although much of what will drive Daisy-Mae in the full story is finding a way to heal her disability, it’s not always about becoming able again. Instead, it’s about finding ways to cope with your disability. And it’s about accepting and loving yourself just the way you are. Daisy-Mae’s story is a journey, a journey of learning that to be disabled is not to be less than you were before (even though society tells you it is), that your worth as person is not tied up in your ability to work (even though society tells you it is) but in who you are as a person and that you can give back to society in other ways, whether by volunteering your time or just being kind to others. That every life is worth living and every person worth loving.
Now, I have only written this little snippet of The Perfectly Ordinary, Extra-Ordinary Life of Daisy-Mae because I am currently working on Truth, Lies and Butterflies (which is about fifteen-year-old Compulsive Liar Masahiko Ochi, set in 2017 Japan if it existed in a world of magical girls and boys) and promoting myself and my writing, including my original poems and finished novel Shattered (which is about thirteen-year-old water mage, otherwise known as a Wasserzauberer, Konstanze “Konnie” Schmetterling, who lives in a High Fantasy world full of magical creatures, when the source of her beautiful, magical city’s magic is threatened), on my TikTok account @k_lange_r and dealing with life stuff.
So, if you would like to read more of this, for me to write this as a full book one day and publish it for your reading pleasure, then please like, comment and, most importantly, reblog this story to let me know!
