Love, life and the Lib Dems
Sep. 21st, 2011 07:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistDoing #ldconf, with a lot of late nights and early mornings and having to "work" through a migraine has only reinforced to me that I'm not well enough to be working "properly" yet.
I wonder about this every so often when I get restless or when I slip into the notion that the only way to lead a worthwhile life is via gainful employment (or something else inapplicable to me, like have kids or be a student).
I feel accomplished and happy with what the organisation I was there for (I feel no sense of connection to my local party and I wasn't a voting representatives, so I felt like LGBT+ Lib Dems and their stall I was nominally responsible for were my main focus), but I was clearly overdoing things.
I was up too early and too late, I was doing a lot of things I find difficult. Pretty much everything debilitating about me is variable, and it seemed like it all -- vision, anxiety, insomnia, depression, etc.etc. -- was hitting me really hard. I was aware that I wasn't able to listen to my body as well as I normally do; it was a shock to the system to be unable to, say, curl up in a quiet room away from people until I slept off the migraine, which is what I have learned is the best way for me to deal with them. I felt particularly blind, because I was in unfamiliar places, though this was exacerbated by tiredness (and worrying about seeing/finding things exacerbated my anxiety in return; nice how these things work, eh?).
Of course it is possible to work while being a person who has migraines -- I've done it; Andrew does it -- or is blind or suffering from anxiety, but they're examples of how much better my current lifestyle allows me to look after myself than I perhaps give myself credit for.
But as a disaybulled person who can't even get benefits, I am endlessly grateful to Andrew for supporting me financially as well as all the other ways he does. It's ridiculous that a partner working more than 24 hours a week is enough to ensure I get no income-related benefits (and the other kinds are proving impossible); Andrew works a lot more than that -- he's just done a month of 60-hour weeks and he's right now probably more ill than I am -- and he gets paid a lot more than minimum wage, but we still struggle. And he never complains, never resents that he'd actually have a nice quality of life if he had that salary to himself. He thinks it's crazy that I even think he might react this way; this teaches me as much about love as it does about how people with various mental and physical conditions should be treated.
I don't really know where I'm going with this, but I'm glad I went to Conference and I'm glad it's over. I'm glad what I called the bi/Lib Dem Singularity of August and September is now nearly over (there's the Homo Hero awards on Thursday, Bi Visibility Day on Friday...and of course there's a lot of LGBT+LD stuff to do/follow up on/etc).
I am looking forward to doing fun stuff the next couple of weekends, and glad that without planning it that way at all, it's worked out that there'll be good things coming up soon.
I have such a lot to be happy and grateful for.
I wonder about this every so often when I get restless or when I slip into the notion that the only way to lead a worthwhile life is via gainful employment (or something else inapplicable to me, like have kids or be a student).
I feel accomplished and happy with what the organisation I was there for (I feel no sense of connection to my local party and I wasn't a voting representatives, so I felt like LGBT+ Lib Dems and their stall I was nominally responsible for were my main focus), but I was clearly overdoing things.
I was up too early and too late, I was doing a lot of things I find difficult. Pretty much everything debilitating about me is variable, and it seemed like it all -- vision, anxiety, insomnia, depression, etc.etc. -- was hitting me really hard. I was aware that I wasn't able to listen to my body as well as I normally do; it was a shock to the system to be unable to, say, curl up in a quiet room away from people until I slept off the migraine, which is what I have learned is the best way for me to deal with them. I felt particularly blind, because I was in unfamiliar places, though this was exacerbated by tiredness (and worrying about seeing/finding things exacerbated my anxiety in return; nice how these things work, eh?).
Of course it is possible to work while being a person who has migraines -- I've done it; Andrew does it -- or is blind or suffering from anxiety, but they're examples of how much better my current lifestyle allows me to look after myself than I perhaps give myself credit for.
But as a disaybulled person who can't even get benefits, I am endlessly grateful to Andrew for supporting me financially as well as all the other ways he does. It's ridiculous that a partner working more than 24 hours a week is enough to ensure I get no income-related benefits (and the other kinds are proving impossible); Andrew works a lot more than that -- he's just done a month of 60-hour weeks and he's right now probably more ill than I am -- and he gets paid a lot more than minimum wage, but we still struggle. And he never complains, never resents that he'd actually have a nice quality of life if he had that salary to himself. He thinks it's crazy that I even think he might react this way; this teaches me as much about love as it does about how people with various mental and physical conditions should be treated.
I don't really know where I'm going with this, but I'm glad I went to Conference and I'm glad it's over. I'm glad what I called the bi/Lib Dem Singularity of August and September is now nearly over (there's the Homo Hero awards on Thursday, Bi Visibility Day on Friday...and of course there's a lot of LGBT+LD stuff to do/follow up on/etc).
I am looking forward to doing fun stuff the next couple of weekends, and glad that without planning it that way at all, it's worked out that there'll be good things coming up soon.
I have such a lot to be happy and grateful for.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 08:55 pm (UTC)He thinks it's crazy that I even think he might react this way; this teaches me as much about love as it does about how people with various mental and physical conditions should be treated.
Yes.
x
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 10:06 pm (UTC)x
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 10:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-24 11:53 am (UTC)singularity news
Date: 2011-09-21 10:04 pm (UTC)Re: singularity news
Date: 2011-09-22 09:06 am (UTC)Re: singularity news
Date: 2011-09-22 09:08 am (UTC)(whereas the 24th I may well be doing something LD-related again)
Re: singularity news
Date: 2011-09-22 09:53 am (UTC)Re: singularity news
Date: 2011-09-22 11:44 am (UTC)Re: singularity news
Date: 2011-09-22 12:21 pm (UTC)(I've sent a couple of e-mails about stuff that still feels time sensitive, but yeah, I'm sure most of it will have to wait until at least tomorrow.
(Getting an auto-reply on one of those e-mails saying the person is taking a beak after Conference and won't be back until Monday does make me feel a bit better about languishing myself :) )
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-22 10:48 am (UTC)I relate to this so so much. born partly out of the disability shaming my mum gets up to.
it sounds like you did really really well, though i think you should make time to go off and take care of yourself/lie down if you need to. make people around you aware of what's happening so they can take care of you...except i know you probably already know that
*hugs*
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-22 12:18 pm (UTC)This is the point I was trying to make in this post. Yes I did what I could to look after myself, I knew it'd be a rough week, and I'm pretty proud of myself for managing as well as I did. In some ways I think it's good to be able to reassure myself that I'm not just lazy or skiving; there are things I really physically cannot cope with even now... it's a dismaying reality, but it's better than beating myself up about my perceived failings.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-22 12:23 pm (UTC)either way, yay for not beating yourself up, and well done for everything you've been doing!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-22 12:45 pm (UTC)And thanks :) In the way of things, it never seems a lot at the time, because when I know I"m not done yet is no time to sit back and reflect, so I'm sure I've been doing more than I think I have.