Over the last week or so I've been thinking a bit about the difference in where I am now and where I was at a good eight to ten years ago which may seem only like yesterday to me given how my brain is wired but actually is a significant amount of time.
This ignores the impact Covid had on me in 2020 and the long covide related conditions I am dealing with too.
For one thing, that was the post breakdown period with me where I hit the buffers trying to play a role I had been encouraged to by a lot of so-called disability experts who today I see as people who fundamentally were trying to deny the major part disabilities play in my life and to a large extent shape by denying the impact and in effect having me do slot into their idea of what a 'successful' disabled person was supposed to be - an achiever showing academic abilities despite disabilities rather than a person who is may well be capable but with significant functioning issues that require constant support.
The other stemming from the same place was they also denied how those limitations mean in terms of mental development, I was functioning several years younger having the overview, language and mindset of a more junior child at high school and several years further on at the same point but being expected to perform at an adult level.
This simply isn't and hasn't in a number of decade hasn't occurred because however good I may be at filling in some gaps, the larger ones remain and to an extent even the fact I do fill the minor gaps leaves me the more vulnerable because people focus on that 'achievement' rather than what I cannot cope with and why I struggle making my way through adult life and situations.
Another of the things around this period was discovering networks sometimes websites sometimes hubs and it was one these that caught my eye Monday when looking through a memory stick with more of an eye to pictures of my old monitor and its screen saver, I spotted some screen prints done off it from a site I spent quite a bit time on.
Yahoo 360 for the youngsters, was a giant hub where lots of groups had spaces on, you could message and blog and your blogs were interactive, you had a update stream from what your friends were doing and at the time I was looking around littles and groups, talking with people, exploring that side of life which I enjoyed until it shut down around July 2009.
That lead to a blog being started *cough* to collate what old posts I originally had on Yahoo 360.
That was a part of my coping mechanism back then as I have been recently explaining a little to people about bringing life back into line with what actually works for me, what meets my actual needs not least the 'little' side of me cos not wishing to sound like a record it's not so much age play as being in an actual age regressed by anyone else's standards headspace without an off button.
One of the first more dedicated spaces I joined was a music related site having shadowed it for a couple of years around the time the Beatles Capitol Albums volume 2 box set came out in 2006 because of some issues that affected initial copies.
It looked at recordings from the "What's the best sounding edition of " and what do you listen with angle which suited me although some there would push you down lines that I didn't find so rewarding and with a times a blind pro older issue policy.
There was a subgroup of "Bones" that had more person rambling conversation on which after a incident got moved to a dedicated site and recently that's been pulled as many of the metaphorically speaking got into bed with Facebook which I never felt comfortable with not least for wanting to keep aspects of this side my life out of limelight of those who misunderstand it.
The other is I do feel more stronger in myself to pursue the life that makes more sense and especially to ensure I'm in those settings that respect my real needs being prepared to engage with me on the level I'm at, helping me to do what I can for myself while while accepting my child-like vulnerabilities prepared to just step in as needed to deal with any situations I land in.
That's come about through the baby steps I took through that period exploring my needs and making appropriate connections to communities where I really belong.
For me then the 00's were where it all came together,
No comments:
Post a Comment