Tag: Help

Simple is relative.

On By Katy DalyIn Blog1 Comment

Sometimes the solution to a problem might seem simple, it might even be simple for you, but that doesn’t mean that it’s simple for everyone.

Yesterday I had a problem with my heating and I have a consistent problem with my dryer. Different people have told me that both these problems can be easily solved, and yet I have had to call someone in for them, because I am unable to fix the problem myself.

But maybe that counts as the easy solution, providing I suppose it solves the problems. Maybe me calling someone to solve the problem, is me solving the problem in a way that’s accessible to me.

Making something accessible doesn’t mean always doing it yourself.

That’s a lesson I learnt many years ago, but one I struggle to remember in the moment.

But in a world which is inheritantly ableist, many don’t count getting someone else to help you do something, as doing it for yourself. And I am someone who needs help to solve the simple problems in life often. So to me they are not simple problems.

But I do, I have to. Otherwise the rest of the world simply happens to me or around me, and I’m not part of it anymore.

There was a time when I wouldn’t have even asked for the help when I needed it, and just let a problem get worse. At least now I have a way to solve it.

So just remember, don’t judge anyone who needs help to get it done, at least the job gets done. We all need a little help sometimes.

When I see a problem I can’t fix

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I spend a lot of time seeing little problems in my life that I want to fix, but I can’t.

Little things, like when a floor needs cleaning, and yes that’s a real example that sparked this post. Little problems that are actually easy to fix, but I just can’t fix on my own.

But the person who I’m often with that could help me fix the problem, doesn’t have the same inspiration of desire to fix the problem that I do. And because there who I need to fix the problem, it doesn’t usually get fixed.

I know I owe a lot to the people in my life that help me. But it gets frustrating when they can’t, or won’t, help me the way that I want to.

I can understand how that makes me seem ungrateful, but there’s only so long you can be grateful for when you need so much help.

Fixing most problems is something that is inaccessible to me.

When you need help you can’t control it

On By Katy DalyIn My Disability TruthLeave a comment

I recently bought a new washing machine, that currently sounds like it’s going to fly out of my kitchen. There’s a problem with the water pipe in the back of it, and while I understand from what I’m told how to fix the problem, I am not in a position to do that at all.

This is a regular occurrence for me, understanding a situation but not being able to act in it, so you would think I’m used to it. I’m not. It’s almost always hard for me to deal with. It’s definitely hard for me to deal with right now.

I am lucky to have a lot of help in my day to d ay life. But with needing that help comes the reality that you are unable to control the help. This is where you get to be mad at me for sounding controlling, but let me defend myself for a minute and say I think it’s more like lack of control.

When there’s a problem, I want it solved. When I can’t be the one to solve it, I have to wait.

And I know this is something that everyone deals with, but for me, it’s different. For me, it’s almost every problem, and certainly all the physical problems, that I need to go to someone else for. That I have no choice but to wait to be solved.

I’m tired of it.

Someone’s good dead for the day

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I got stuck today. It wasn’t the first time I’ve been stuck and it definitely won’t be the last.

The person I was with when I got stuck was unable to help me and so I called someone who could. While I was on the phone to the person who was able to help me some people came past and heard that I was stuck and offered to help me. They were able to help me and I was able to get home without having to call anyone to come rescue me. I’m really glad but I didn’t even want to come get me and grateful that they were able to help. But this isn’t really what I want to write about.

What I really want to write about, is something that the people who helped me said after they had helped me. Before I mention what this was, I want to say that I know they didn’t mean anything bad by what they said. And I’m very glad that they were able and willing to help me when I needed it.

One of the group mentioned that they’ve been unable to fix something earlier that day. And that they felt like they needed to do something good in the day to make up for being able to do what they couldn’t do earlier. You can see where this is going right? I was that good deed for them to complete today.

Well, the most important thing is that I’m obviously safe and well, and it is good that they feel good for helping someone. This kind of thought process does worry me a little bit.

I guess I just don’t like the idea of being someone’s good deed, a tick box thing for someone to do. How many people in wheelchairs if you have you helped lately? That type of thing.

I hope one day we can get to a point we’re helping people is not about how good it makes us feel. But maybe that’s a little too optimistic.

When they insist on doing it for you but get mad about it.

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So I think part of my trauma of living with my disability has developed in my need to know everything about the little things in life. It makes me feel like I have some amount of control over my life, when in reality I control so little. This doesn’t help when the person I live with lies to me about things.

I know its to make me happy and they mean well and it just small things. But when I find out thar they lied to me it makes me feel more out of control.

I have no choice but to trust them. But I just don’t know how to sometimes. Sometimes I feel like they’re lying to me even when I can’t prove it. And asking them to prove it causes problems with them. They get upset with me.

So I try to skip that and check on things myself. But they offer to step in and do it for me, or sometimes it is something I can’t check without their help. Either way, I can’t make them understand why I need proof of these things. Why I really want to see proof of these things? How much something so minor to them is stressing me.

I think the little things in life, like where the batteries matter when you’re disabled. And I don’t think that’s my fault that they matter so much to me. And I don’t think it’s their fault that they don’t understand why it matters to me so much, they also have some processing difficulties so they genuinely just don’t get it I think.

It feels like there’s nothing I can do to get out of this situation. I need there help. I need to rely on them. They just don’t understand what that’s really like for me. And how much trust that involves.

Technically difficulties and I’m tired.

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If it wasn’t clear from any changes that you might be seeing on this blog at the minute, I’m trying to sort out Menus and subcategories, namely how to put subcategories in to drop down menus. I’m struggling to do this as the instructions I have found and the directions I have been given don’t seem to match up. So if anyone knows how to do this I would be grateful.

Additionally, as I sit here trying to figure all this out, and writing the post about it, I can feel the fatigue set in, so I think I’m going for a nap.

If anyone reading this, knows how to do what I am trying to do, or is able to guide me in any way, your help would be greatly appreciated.

I’ll get back to you, and this, after a nap.

Someone offered to help me

On By Katy DalyIn My Disability TruthLeave a comment

Yesterday when I was out someone offered to help me without my asking. And I know they mean well but honestly it made me a little uncomfortable afterwards.

I appreciate the thought but it makes me feel out of control to have people just step into help me without me asking for it.

Sometimes I would rather struggle and do something myself than ask for help. And I know that seems counter productive from the outside, but I’ve worked hard to find ways to do things myself and when others step in without me asking it ruins the way I’ve figured out doing things.

This is just a reminder that if you’re helping people without asking them first, that maybe helping them is about making you feel good and not actually helping them.

What’s it like when something irrational bothers you

On By Katy DalyIn Blog, My Disability TruthLeave a comment

I am the type of person that will be bothered by things at random points in the day. The things I’m bothered by usually don’t matter, they’re just inconsequential little things, like where my gloves that I don’t really need right now are.

The problem is my disability and the inaccessibility of the world around me means that I cannot go looking for these things myself. Therefore I am left reliant on those around me to do what must be frustrating and seemingly pointless, just to deal with the anxiety created by whatever is bugging my brain so to speak.

The frustration is very physical to me, like an ich I can’t scratch. It honestly seems to play on repeat in my head, heightened at the most unhelpful times, until I have some way to deal with it.

Equally annoying is what these states of discomfort can be triggered by. For instance I just got triggered from reading a Facebook article. That wasn’t fun.

I can’t find my cereal bar.

On By Katy DalyIn My Disability TruthLeave a comment

So as I often do when I can’t sleep at night, I was just reading one of those random facebook articles, and it mentioned someone who didn’t know how you were supposed to eat those cereal bars, you know the ones that comes with milk/chocolate in the bottom. This reminded me that yesterday or last night to be more accurate, my sister gave me one of those bars and I don’t remember eating it.

So now I am, maybe irrationally, worried that I have lost a cereal bar somewhere in my room. With two dogs I’m even more worried for there sake, I obviously don’t want them to have eaten it. I don’t think it would do them a great deal of harm, but I don’t want to find out the hard way that I am wrong, you know. And if they don’t eat it, which is obviously the better option, I just don’t like the idea of a cereal bar lost somewhere in my room.

The problem here, aside from the lost bar, is that I cannot go and look for the bar myself. As due to my disability once I am in bed, I am in bed for the night. Even if I was in my chair, I still wouldn’t be able to look for something I have lost properly on my own, though I would have a better chance of being able to do this in my chair.

I obviously cannot ask my sister in the middle of the night to help me find a cereal bar, that there is a chance I may have eaten anyway. When I say to help me find it, I’m being nice to myself, I mean look for it for me. She obviously would, but I make a point of not asking her for things in the middle of the night that are not completely necessary. And as much as this is bugging me logically, I know that it is not that important. I wish that would mean it would stop annoying me, though in my extensive experience of losing things I know this is not the case.

I think part of why loosing things bugs me so much is my disability, It’s the lack of being able to look for the things myself.

It’s the lack of control when something is missing.

It’s the helplessness from the fact that I am unable to solve the problem myself.

It’s the helplessness from needing someone else, as an adult, to help me solve what feels like such a simple problem that I wish I could solve on my own.

It’s knowing that no matter how much I want to be able to solve this problem on my own, I will not be able to do that.

So really what’s bugging me is not the cereal bar, it’s being disabled.

Not being able to walk has never really bothered me, well not much anyway. But it’s everything else that my disability leaves me unable to do. It’s all the missing things that are the hardest to deal with, like finding my cereal bar.

I will let you know, if I remember to post about it, if I end up being brave enough to ask my sister for the help I need tomorrow.