16. What Makes You Strong?

Q.

What makes you strong? How do you keep finding the will to fight? It’s hard enough for people who aren’t in your situation (who suffer mental illness), so how do you sit there with your own thoughts like that? What gets you through besides writing? You are so strong and brave but how the hell do you do it? I know you get this question a lot but you’re a fkn miracle how you keep staying strong enough to fight and stay positive!!

A.

Hmm… a lot to unpack here, oh and thanks for your question. Anyway, I think the thing that first comes to mind (when directing this at my own personal circumstance and experiences), I don’t have much choice or say in the matter. So, rolling with the punches is something that I do often. Also, I’m naturally very stubborn, adaptable and creative, and yep these traits have all served me well.

But the part of this question that stood out to me the most, it’s where you asked “how do you sit there in your own thoughts like that?” And to chunk this down further, the part of my life that I don’t think many people understand is that I’m incredibly lonely. Especially so now that I can’t talk (which has been for two years). Then, the staff where I live, yeah we interact only it really is a bunch of emotionally distant working relationships.

Back to your question though, I believe it’s two things that hold my head above water (which I don’t know if either is wrong or right, rather it’s just what I do). But one is that I’m a massive day-dreamer, like no joke I fantasise about things constantly, and it’s also a world that nobody or my health can touch.

I dream on and on, and typically I create scenes of moments or even of lives I’d love to be living. Which, FYI, I am so ready to be a member of the royal fam, haha I am perfectly suited. Prince Markuss.

Then the other thing I do, I jump from project to project to project. And I completely obsess over them until they reach a point (of completion?) that I’m happy with.

Now, these projects can range from a bucket list item to a sneaker collection, but one thing is for certain, I absolutely go all in. I hate being half-assed. Maybe this another thing that makes me, as you put it, strong and a fighter. Dunno. And my current projects (to give you even more insight into what I do and how I do it), I’ve got my eyes firmly fixed on four prizes. They are this advice column, getting a mainstream publishing deal (via a literary agent), writing an online course, then getting a job as an advertising copywriter. Oh and man, I am dreaming about each of these things constantly.

One life.

But that’s the thing and quite possibly the craziest thing about me (and in the way I see the world), in general I don’t really think of myself as disabled – or at least it’s a little way down the list. Plus, I never use it as an excuse not to do anything, in fact, at uni I try not to even mention it.

My disability nor my circumstance is not who I am.

I am a child of God – as we all are.

And knowing this, yeah, well, this is how I do it.