Awesome Disabled

(3 minutes read time)

I hate physiotherapy. I hate when people look at my body, and I hate when medical people judge my body. It took a lot of courage for me to even email the physiotherapist’s office.

Turns out, my physiotherapist is a lovely, soft soul who can understand my decades of medical trauma, and is taking it step-by-step with me. Plus she puts up with all my random side tangents and rambles about the patriarchy, which is nice.

She tells me that we are working on my “small muscles” and my gait. Turns out, my ankles are quite weak, to the surprise of no one. My calves and my thighs are strong, and she tells me that my big muscles are compensating for the lack of development of the small muscles in my feet and ankles.

My physiotherapist gave me two exercises to build my small muscles, and to help them work together. I do them daily, and they are absolutely excruciating. I feel like I want to punch someone in the face. I feel rage because my big muscles are incapacitated. Every fibre in my being wants to quit these stupid fiddly exercises.

As a single mom, I am an expert at using my strong muscles. Sometimes I discover strength where I didn’t even know I had it. Of course, my literal muscles get strengthened, like when I need to make dinner and do the dishes after a full day of work, or setting up a camping site all by myself. I chop wood; I start fires and cook food for my kids on the fire, like my ancestors did.

When I first left my husband, we agreed that our kids would go to their grandparents’ for the weekend. I set up a whole.ass.apartment in that time. I sat down and cried for a moment when I saw the graphic with two people working together on the IKEA flat-pack bunk bed. I didn’t have another person, so I put together the beds myself, through the tears. Talk about big muscles.

But I’ve got big muscles in other areas too. I am smart, and my brain is my go-to big muscle. I brute force problems with my sense of logic and intelligence. I use my big brain muscle to understand the social cues that I misunderstand all the time too. I notice everything that’s happening all the time so that I know who’s thinking what, and who may be a threat.

I have also built organization and energy-management skills– those are pretty big muscles for me too. I’m a well-oiled machine when it comes to doing a task, especially one I can put my head down and focus on.

But the small muscles? I tell you. I hate those. Muscles like patience. Emotional awareness. Empathy. Man, those things are tough. They feel the same as those stupid foot and ankle exercises.

I am a workhorse — I like using my big (literal and metaphorical) muscles. I hate the fiddly stuff. Recently, my life has been a lot of fiddly stuff. I have uncertainty about my work future. I had a breakup, with a lot of feelings and wobbliness. And of course, summer parenting is a fekking slog. It’s been feeling like all small muscles, and sometimes I feel like I want to scream.

The good news is that my ankle muscles are getting stronger. Slowly but surely, my gait is improving and I’m less likely to fall and injure myself. My small emotional muscles are also getting stronger, and my emotional balance is improving too. As much as I hate to admit it, it’s worth it to strengthen my small muscles.