Falling Off the Wagon

So…. I’ve been away for a minute. Maybe a bit more than a minute. I missed you. I’m glad to be back.

Here’s what I did while I was gone:

saved to buy a home
took steps forward in my career
organized my apartment
got my mental health in order
survived the Canuck prairie winter (brrrrr!)
trained, trained, trained, and finally ran 5 km in one gym session

Whenever I think about this blog, I felt guilty, like a hot sword thrust through my chest. I felt like a failure. I had fallen off the wagon.

Being a disabled woman in the full-time workforce, it’s easy to develop an awful self-narrative. I’m erratic. I flunk out of everything. I give up too easily. It’s only a matter of time before I give up again.

Although it might be unrealistic to think that I will never fall off the wagon, it’s hard to not see myself through the dominant narrative. Especially being a sensory girlie^TM, I have gotten into patterns in work (and in life) where it feels like it’s only a matter of time. There’s only so much manual sensory processing I can do in a loud or stimulating environment, and I get exhausted from it after a while. If I have to do it day in and day out, I get burned out and then my train goes all the way off the tracks. That’s when I talk to my doctor, and, through tears and desperately catching my breath, I explain that I need to go on leave. Again. It feels messy and inelegant, not to mention a crappy way to be engaging with the world of work.

Enter the self-narratives. I’m giving up. I’m flunking out. I’m a failure.

I think one of the biggest gains I’ve made in my mental health journey is to let these thoughts come and go without letting them get a toehold. I recognize that I can tumble off the wagon, and then, when I’m ready, climb right back on. In fact, that may be how it’ll be for me forever. Stop. Fall off. Gain inertia. Get back on.

For us disabled folk, a common narrative I hear about is the inability to plan for the future, or to even imagine a future. I think that part of it is this constant scramble to get back onto the wagon. This makes it difficult to see positive inertia in our lives and our careers. Sometimes I feel like, if I couldn’t see my kids literally getting bigger, I might not feel like there’s forward movement in my life at all. Every day is a new day, with a new set of challenges, and a whole bunch of struggle. It’s easy to be demoralized.

But we keep going. And we do what we can. I get to do some cool stuff in my job, and I have dreams for my future. Plus I got a house to buy, y’all! My own big girl house. I’m almost at my savings goals.

So, my hope is for two new posts a week. Maybe one. My hope is to stay on the wagon. I’m gonna keep hoping, and keep dreaming, and keep trying.

I hope you stick around for it. It’s gonna be amazing.