The Pillar We Can’t Knock Down

Having a disability and/or a chronic illness is a bitter pill to swallow. Our daily lives are the same but at the same time, rarely the same. Let me explain.

Developing a chronic illness presents people with unique challenges and forces those of us unfortunate enough to develop one into adapting to a world that is not quite ready to accept us.

Daily life for people inflicted with disability and illness is filled with the same, let’s call them pillars, they don’t change from one day to the next and are always there. Isolation, loneliness, judgment and an ever worsening deterioration in self esteem and confidence.

These four pillars don’t move. They are incredibly hard to accept and even harder to try and continually fight against. It is like swimming upstream, constantly fighting a current that want to sweep you away, further into the depths.

At least one of those pillars can’t be moved, knocked down or accepted because it isn’t a perceived thing. No amount of CBT can break it down. That is judgement. It’s not imagined. It is not something someone with low self esteem thinks exists, its there and I challenge you to ask any disabled person, especially a younger person if they have felt, experienced or witnessed judgement. I would be totally shocked if they said no.

This pillar is everywhere.

It comes from your neighbours. Family members. Friendships that slowly but surely slip away. Random people in the street and people at the supermarket. Even parking your car in a disabled space. It comes from politicians. It comes from the media and other influential public figures. It is everywhere and there is zero escape.

The number of people that stare at you, looking you up and down trying to decide if you meet their definition of disabled or worthy of parking in that space. I find those worse than the people who think its ok to ask “so, what’s up with you then?” Or those that make assumptions like “you got a funny knee or something?”.

It is this constant judgement that reinforces all the other pillars. Strengthening them, making them harder and harder to break through.

It’s this vicious cycle that fuels the isolation, loneliness, judgement and low confidence.

In a world that feels ever more divisive, with alarming similarities to 1930’s Europe and the worsening need to pin all society’s ills on vulnerable groups, whether the disabled, immigrants or people in receipt of state support and welfare.

It’s a depressing situation and for those that fall into one or more of these categories, a deeply scary and worrying time, which unfortunately I do not see ending any time soon. In fact, I see this situation worsening as the popularity of far right and in some cases, fascist groups continue to increase and gain ever more traction.

We are already seeing this in the western world. For example in the USA and with President Trump and ICE. We are also seeing an increase in far right ideologies in the UK political system with the rise in popularity of parties like Reform UK and Restore Britain.

For those of us living with these pillars, we are forced to continue on our daily upstream battle, fighting the currents. We simply don’t have any other choice. The day we choose to stop swimming, to stop fighting, is the day we will sink to the bottom and let those that seek to divide us, win. I am in no doubt that our society needs to reform, to modernise to keep up with today’s difficulties, but we are always stronger together.

Division will not enable us to work towards solutions for the greater good of society; in fact, divided solutions will simply cause more problems.