I've never been to me

The title of Charlene’s slushy ballad of awakening self-discovery seems to find an echo in his life as Paul Carter turns over yet another new leaf

There’s nothing like a good, albeit fast-receding festive period to undo any good work you’ve done previously and turn yourself back into a big old blubbery mess is there? With my fitness kick in full swing, (see last month if you have no idea what I’m blathering on about) the new me crashed headlong into the festive fortnight in a tangled mess of eating and drinking, only to see the old me come crawling pathetically out the other side like, well, a bloke with no arms or legs who spent two weeks stuffing alcohol and junk food down his gullet.

Like most people, I’m choosing to overcome the even more highly pervasive sense of guilt and self-loathing than usual by making that wonderful emotional crutch to beat myself with for failing them – New Year’s resolutions.

Several of them are the usual self improvement bunkum, along with other mundane objectives like take a proper holiday, not waiting till the bin’s overflowing before taking it out and the like.

There’s the usual selection of ridiculously unattainable goals in there too; stop drinking, join a gym, grow arms – that kind of thing.

One thing that I am determined to see through though, that I’ve been trying to do steadily for the past couple of years, is to embrace my identity as a disabled person a little bit more, and take pride in the fact a bit more so than I have in the past.

You see, for most of my life I’ve operated in some weird pseudo half-disabled bubble (not literally, though that would be awesome), where I’m happy to be seen as disabled when it suits me, but spending the majority of my time fiercely refusing to label myself or be put into a metaphorical box. Indeed, for a large period of my life, I saw disabled people as being distinctly “other” from me. The younger me would have been quite astonished (can you be quite astonished? Anyway) at the thought of present day me having other disabled friends, let alone *shock horror* going out and socialising with them. I’m happy to report though that these days, I’m far happier in my own skin. I think it’s something to do with getting older. Or it could be the gin.

What that translates to in everyday life is not refusing help from somebody when in actual fact, a bit of assistance would be quite handy. But also speaking up a bit more when things aren’t as accessible as they could be, or when somebody says something that’s not wholly appropriate. After all, who doesn’t like a firebrand?

Anyway, I’m off for some non-alcoholic lager and a salad. With chips on the side, naturally.