It was the top of page 212 that unlocked the floodgates I had been blinking back all day:
For people who are in continual pain, the relationship with bodily risk is different. Pain is not a healthful by-product of healthy exertion or impressive effort: it is a constant companion. You want to limit your time with pain, not encourage it.
For people who live with fatigue, the relationship with effort is different. Exhaustion is not a healthful by-product of healthy exertion or impressive effort: it is a constant companion. You want to preserve yourself from fatigue, not encourage it.
— Polly Atkin: Some of Us Just Fall
Anyone — and it probably is a one (so thank you, dear reader!) — who has followed this blog over the last eleven years or so (even when it has vanished into the haze of forgetfulness, or weirdly veered down the path less travelled by) will understand my cathartic tears: disability, along with (for me) its constituents pain, fatigue (sans sleep), and an overwhelming desire to walk (when I shouldn’t), are the chief characters found amongst the subplots cunningly pushed through these pages, as they are throughout my life. Since three other motorists did their best to render me immobile (or worse), and (much later) my heart suddenly stopped (ostensibly because of a drug I was taking to alleviate one of the main aspects of the disability caused by those earlier collisions, but actually caused by a congenital genetic mutation), disability and illness have become intertwined both in my life and in my mind (although possibly in different ways). They have also become my necessary guides (although possibly not always in a good way).
