The Indoor Rabbit sniffs

2019. I have taken on new students and said goodbye to some old. I have had a few people cancel indefinitely due to illness and I so hope the Children are now fully recovered and resting well. I have also had to cancel sessions and at times whole clients due to anxiety, depression and so on. Very recently I was approached by someone whom would come to be my most local student ever, being less than five minutes away by walking, just a little walk beyond my road. Conditions such as chronic anxiety can still be debilitating with local students but there are some advantages, such as not requiring a bus 

Woodgate Valley, home to no longer my nearest student but now second nearest, is one of the most difficult places for me to travel to. The panic at just seeing cars, before even hearing their audaciously inconsiderate rumblings, freezes me in fear. And other times forms such a panic that I have to fight terribly hard not to throw myself in any random direction in a desperate bid to escape the sounds and blurs. I am knowing that some of these sensory issues can be related with traits associated with autism.

Incidentally, regarding my visit to the next specialist for me to see this year, I am told that the next appointment is in November. 

Recently I printed off a transcription piece from a Doctor Who episode to serve as something for people to read during auditions, giving us a sense of their style of performance/s etc. I plan to print off many other scripts as well.

There are joys that help lessen the grip of disability by moving me to a state where I feel...different. In multiple ways, one of which being encouraging me to keep perserving through the pain and loneliness and another, for instance, being the encouragement that it is ok to be disabled, in that we have such strong pressure to hide our pains, foibles, slips, weaknessess etc and that itself creates such an unfair additional burden. I am feeling that some of my parents would be understanding but at the same time I feel I would be taking advantage of their kindness should I confide in them. Take my regular Monday family. They appear to me with such kindness and warmth and despite the neglect I have known so long at the hands of others, how it maniuplates you into believing noone really cares for you, that every gesture should be doubted, every smile treated as though poison, I believe that they really are kind and are not mocking me. Yet, knowing what is inside of my mind, would I not be cruel to burden them with the same, to tell just a portion of my story? Then factor in that I know they have had their own terribly painful struggles: how could I ever confide in them? I have had the same struggles with therapists, knowing that they are Human still, knowing that emotion can never actually be shut off, at least not so casually. However, with my Monday family I am reminded also of the opposite effect being possible. Just as me and Alice's family are bonded by our love for Alice and the grief we struggle with over losing her, we can also support one another, perhaps without even trying, just by expressing our shared love. It could be then that, even someone as humble and weak as I, may be able to provide some sort of...guidance to this other family. Maybe. 

My mood is still erratic and terribly extreme. Hopelessness is my permanent mood and yet things, such as music, will trigger a brief and immense resurgence of hope: a most desperate but not at all fickle hope. A genuine, heartfelt passion. A belief that I can honour Alice and protect her family in some way yet I never lose sight, during any mood, of the immensity of the task. And I am always happy to spend my life trying to complete this most important quest of mine. I love Alice. It is as simple as that. I miss her so terribly. Not even I, as an author, can describe to you how I feel. It is not a static thought, a simple list of items to detail and have you browse. Losing a loved one 

 

While I continue with project Reach Faith I must also continue to look after my students, as I always seek to do. When I look at Ashley, Harry, Harriette, Roshan, Yusin...I do not see a student, first and foremost. I see a Child I must protect and whom I happen to do so partly via education but whose needs of all must be addressed. Parents place their Child's life in my hands, not simply their education and I take that reponsibility so seriously.  

The battle to get outdoors, stay outdoors and travel safely continues. I just hope that, for once, this battle will not be mine alone to deal with, as it has been for most of my life.

I still have not heard back about my MRI results. It should be around three weeks now since I had my scans. I feel that the results clearly highlighted malfunction and neurologist and GP are now chattering back and forth over preliminary diagnosis to label me with. That might just be me hoping in vein and in actuality the delay is due to lost results or some such negative outcome. I would like to begin therapies and treatments for as many disabilities as I can before this year's end approaches. And already I hear the yawn of 2020 and is makes ready to wake. Not yet, my Friend. We still have work to do and my missions assume priority over your impeding wakefulness.

My Dudley family are all wonderful people, it seems. Complete contrasts to the bullies I faced time and time again. But I was thinking, the other day, as my student's Mother smiled at me, what a truly beautiful smile it was and it warms me. You know well that I do not issue such lightly or superficially and from what I have seen in life it is tremendously hard to believe there truly does exist good people beside myself. But a smile can act as a siren, or a beacon of hope or be enjoyed directly for what it is but still with almost immeasurable depth. For me, one of the things a smile does is attempt to assure me that I will not be beaten, verbally or physically, that hand will not strike me like in the days past and as I still see and feel in flashbacks. That this person is not mocking but genuine. That this person is safe. That, therefore, I am safe, in this brief moment in space and time. Never understimate the calmness

Whenever I am reminded of how oblivious people are to my disabilities in general or accusing us of lying about our struggles, I am reminded of this scene in Doctor Who, played out by Peter Capaldi. So if you do not mind, I have pasted the link below, shoold you wish to explore. The precise moment in question is when Docter responds with "You see me but don't see me... Have you any idea how that feels?" That really gets to me. These words are both good summary and introduction to disabilities in 21st Century England.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQHC7a9JEQQ