I’m so pleased you have stumbled across my blog. I hope it provides some truthful insight; be you newly injured, like myself, or perfectly healthy.

 

 

On 2nd April 2015, at 20 years old, my life drastically changed. I was a young, fun, carefree student, at one of the best institutions in the UK, reading Law with International Politics. I pretty much did whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to do it and being in my second year, I felt I had really set the foundations for the wonderful and exciting life I was building. And then on that fateful day, everything was different.

Not that I realised it, but I woke up three weeks later from a coma as a T3/4 incomplete (ASIA B) paraplegic, after falling four floors from a hotel balcony, whilst on a university sports tour in Salou, Spain

I woke up unable to move anything below my chest. Doctors would trail their fingers from my collarbone to my navel and I would lose them along the way.

People think that death is the worst thing that can happen to a person. They’re wrong.

Yes, it is devastating for those left behind, but at least that person can rest in eternal peace.

Whereas I am stuck here. Here in hell, as a prisoner in my own body.

Growing up, I was an international trampoline gymnast representing Great Britain. Striving for perfection, I had and needed complete control of my body. And unfortunately, I now have none. I may be able to use my arms, but it is no consolation.

Whilst also grappling with my new disability, I have struggled with M.E (myalgic encephalomyelitis/ chronic fatigue syndrome) since I was about 14. Finally diagnosed at 16, I was left bedbound for a year in constant pain and exhausted from just being alive. But, I pushed through, finished my A Levels in English Literature, Government and Politics and Sociology and moved off to university with the hopes of becoming a human rights barrister.

I now have no idea what I want to do with my life. I don’t want to die; but I don’t want to live like this. I cannot muster the stregnth to fight my own battle, so how could I possibly fight other people’s?

On some levels I am the same girl who loved to help people, socialise and have fun; yet, I feel like a different person. Ultimately, I don’t know who I am anymore, but I do feel completely defined by these reclaimed bicylce parts that enable me to mobilise.

Thus the creation of The Woman in the Wheelchair.

This will never be okay and I need time to grieve that. I’ve lost everything that was and every possible thing that could have been. And although people tell me that they accept this process, it is pretty clear that they want me to move on already.

And so from this tragedy, I hope that somebody, somewhere, can find comfort in my struggle and know that despite the new label of ‘inspirational’, it is perfectly okay to be anything but.