Emotional Stability,Disability and Accessibility

I do apologize to my readers that I have not written in so very long, since September to be exact. I've been very busy and didn't have the energy to focus in on writing. I not only was working but of course the holidays are always an emotional time for just about everyone, be it stress, anger, happiness. For myself it's always been a time of great stress and though I would like to think it's a happy time with friends and family most often it seems it is not. I did have some good times but for the most part for family reunion I didn't connect with anyone and really felt out of place and alone. I also have my birthday in December, and though that usually again is supposed to be happy, it usually has something, at least one thing, go wrong. This year, it was the passing of a good and close friend, think me silly for saying this, my cat Ozzy.


Ozzy helped me, you see he might only have been a cat to some but he was the closest friend I've had for the past 7 years. He comforted me, listened to me, took care of me when I was sick even. He didn't ask questions, didn't demand anything (except food haha!) and simply gave all of his love. I was in a very dark place when I got him and having him around reminded me that I had something to live for. Someone that would give unconditional love and I could do the same. He had a heart murmur that I was aware of and was told to keep an eye on and at his 11 years of age on December 2nd, two days before my birthday, his heart started to fail. It was so quick that he became ill. He went from and old man with the mind and heart of a kitten to being frail and trying to old on. But he knew it was his time and he didn't fight it when we got to the vet. Emotionally this has taken it's toll on me and even now I tear up thinking about it. Sometimes I hear or feel phantom meows or paws on me. I do take comfort though in knowing that he trained Cosmo, my other kitten, well and that he went knowing I will be taken care of and that I loved him with all my heart.

Moving on to our other topics of today's post, emotional stability, disability and accessibility. Let's focus on emotional stability first where knowing that I have many friends and co-workers coping with multiple emotional mental illness. Yes depression, anxiety etc. are connected to emotional stability and really are at the heart of so many mental illnesses. It's chemical imbalances in the brain really however it's those chemical imbalances that are controlling your emotions. It really makes me wonder what the cause of the increase of mental illness is. In fact according to yet another recent report in my local paper here, we have in fact an overflow of such, a crisis. Why do we have so many people that need to go to the ER for mental health crisis? Why do we have so many in this area alone that have mental health issues?

Personally I think it's a number of things such as cuts in health care costs and staffing and so people don't care. Just as if you're under paid and over worked in any environment you're not going to perform well. Here in North America in general (Canada and the US.) we are constantly pushed to work work work until we fall over and then have to pay through the nose for health care because we're underpaid and overworked and we don't want to miss work so we work more making ourselves burnt out and then unemployed or our body just can't sustain it anymore and so we seek out disability and medical attention where there isn't any or lack thereof. I'm experiencing this cycle myself as are my colleagues who have either now left, or gone on leave from the working environment that we are/were in.

Now this also leads me to disability. What is the definition of disability?  The dictionary puts it as this:

noun

1. a physical or mental condition that limits a person's movements, senses, or activities.

   synonyms:

   handicap, disablement, incapacity, impairment, infirmity, defect,abnormality; More

   • a disadvantage or handicap, especially one imposed or recognized by the law.

     "he had to quit his job and go on disability"
   • 
     
   • So that being said, why do people think that the unseen is not a disability? Illnesses that are mental illnesses are in fact a disability because they limit the senses and activities. Some would say anxiety is not however it is and two of my friends I have seen take its toll on them. They can't find work or they are unable to cope in certain situations and use alternative means that are either healthy or not healthy such as alcohol. I know I have anxiety and there are different kinds. Myself, it is General Anxiety which means it can come  on at any time simply by worry or a thought or just waking up with it. Most days I am ok but there have been days where I can't even get out of bed to go to work because I'm so sick with worry, over what seems to be nothing to most people. But it's real! So are things such as depression and fibromyalgia and lupus. You can't escape these and you can't tell me that they aren't real because one day the person is fine. 

   
   I feel for those that have something like fibromyalgia as well that is clearly an illness and has just been recognized as such over the past year or two really. People don't understand that there will be days that you can hop out of bed do a ton of things and feel great and then the very next day you'll regret doing anything at all and lifting even a bag of potatoes or getting out of bed or remembering to pick up something at the store because of fibro-fog or focusing on anything simply hurts. It's a day to day thing and there are symptoms and other physical things that go with it that come and go and you are in constant pain almost. I can't imagine being in constant pain however I know family and close friends that suffer through it, put a smile on their face and pretend like it's not there just to a) cope and try to be normal and b) so they don't feel they are a burden on everyone else. 

This leads me next to accessibility. As the article above mentions we don't have access to care. But what about other items. I leave  you with these twitter threads I've come across about this topic here and here  and you can decide for yourselves. I personally think there should be more items like this and would be full support of it because I think we need more of it, not to be lazy but to help those who want to have a normal life, not feel like a burden and be able to be emotionally healthier. When you can do something yourself or don't have to have someone do it for you because you've found a tool or something that makes it easier for you to do it, you have a sense of accomplishment and freedom not to have to rely on everyone else. This makes us better as a whole. 

Now I leave you to your thoughts and comments. Feel free to discuss. Have a happy month and I will try to continue posting yet again once per month. Thanks for reading!!