#and as a cripple with chronic pain in their right leg who uses a cane and uses humor to deflect the seriousness around them

[a-crimson-impressionism]

I am so obsessed with House MD and I haven't even hit episode 10 yet. It's just incredible!

[beyondthisdarkhouse]

Shoe history: The personal side

I'm trying to break my posts into smaller, more digestible lumps of less than a thousand words each, so this one is boring technical stuff about my starting search parameters when looking for shoes to make and techniques to use. My chronic hyper-pronation and a significant leg length discrepancy (as well as some stuff about my ankle) are tough for me to accommodate.

I've got a lot of research to write up about shoes and their history that isn't really useful to me, except as examples of what won't work right now. Western fashion has been absolutely dominated by high heels since they burst onto the scene in the late 1500s, in a history that has both fascinated and surprised me. I'll write it up, but in conclusion, high heels are absolutely not for me.

Mooostly because I already have uhhh, a lot going on with my heels already.

The biggest thing I need to accommodate for in any pair of shoes is that one of my legs is two inches (5 cm) longer than the other. I turned down surgeries to prevent this when I was in elementary school, and damn I regret that now.

General reference points: Very few humans have perfectly identical leg lengths. According to research I've seen, leg length difference (LLD) of up to 3 cm is usually mild and only rarely requires treatment like corrective shoe inserts. LLDs greater than 6 cm are considered "severe" and corrective surgery is usually recommended.

I sit in the "moderate" LLD category of 3-6cm; doctors were concerned when I was five, thought I was fine when I was 8, but by the time I was 20, the strain on my knees and hips from walking unevenly was quite literally crippling. That's the era I walked with a cane, looked into wheelchairs, and took two years of wearing a 7/8" (2.2 cm) shoe lift before my pain abated enough in every joint but one to figure out that also, I'd been walking on a torn ligament in my knee for a couple years too.

(The day that I tore it, I was already in screaming amounts of pain from hip to toe, so I noticed it less than I might have. I honestly should have gone ahead and gotten a walker or wheelchair during that period, but my doctor then was very NO IF YOU GET A MOBILITY DEVICE ALL YOUR MUSCLES WILL ATROPHY AND THEN YOU'LL DIE. I should probably have a walker/wheelchair/scooter now, but I've so carefully excluded things that require lots of walking or standing out of my life that it never feels that pressing a need for my money. But I digress.)

For me, this means an orthopedic build-up:

(image source)

Usually, this means that I take my shoes to a nice person who carefully slices off the bottom of the sole on one of them, and then glues layers of foam to the bottom of the shoe. If the sole is thick enough that the bottom of the sole can be salvaged, he re-attaches it; if it isn't, he puts some other form of rubber soling on the bottom.

(Petty: This always makes me feel very selfconscious when walking in snow or mud. "Crap, I can't commit a crime here! I have mismatched shoes so Sherlock Holmes would catch me for sure.")

(Possibly more valid but also petty: The material used to create the lift is usually EVA foam, which comes in a limited range of solid colours. This makes matching build-up material to a shoe that's anything but white or black extremely difficult. Paint on the EVA tends to scuff off easily, and rubber paints that work on the rest of the sole go kinda weird on the EVA. EVA picks up paint and discolouring stains at a different rate than the soling around it, and responds differently to cleaning. This means that even when I find nice shoes that can be built up, the build-up feels glaringly obvious to me, so even if other people don't notice, it destroys a lot of my own pleasure in them.)

A shoe lift does increase my risk of stepping wrong and twisting my ankle, like with any platform shoe. This was especially true when I first started wearing one. It was safest for me to wear hi-tops or ankle boots that provided my ankle with a lot of stability from top to bottom, even though the ones I could afford (and that came small enough to fit me) were generally garish, juvenile, and absolutely not in any fashion I really wanted to wear. I hated shoes; shoes made me miserable. I tried not to think about them and whined when one pair fell apart and needed replacement. That was life.

And god, between the LLD, the bum knee, and the hyperpronation, it took me years and years before the ankle of my short leg could function normally. It was hypermobile in some directions, and hypomobile in others.

Basically: My muscles, tendons, and ligaments had all grown so used to the skewed way I walked and stood, that a lot of them were too short to comfortably reach the "ideal" standing position. It's easier to fix muscles that are too long, because building up muscles through exercise is basically asking them to contract and grow to get better at contracting. But while muscles will bitch when they're stretched but mostly get used to it, the entire point of tendons and ligaments is to not stretch. They're the body's great stabilizers. So the day my podiatrist got the x-ray back showing a 2" discrepancy in my foot, he said, "We're not going to put you on a 2" lift today. We're going to take at least five years to get you there."

(I'd like to take this moment to shout out my illiotibial band and extensor hallucis longus muscle, which were the real MVPs of a team that worked to make my life a living hell for those five straight years. I should have been in massage therapy every other week, but who can afford that, lol amirite? I started doing yoga, got massages as often as I could afford them, and made heat pads in my bed and a drinking glass, pitcher of water, and bottle of painkillers on my dresser a permanent part of my bedroom decor.)

I worry that people will take this blog as a how-to guide on how to make their own shoes for their own nonstandard feet. It is not. It is a guide to how to figure out how to make one's own shoes for one's own custom feet, so I absolutely need to explain just what that process has been thus far. It feels like my history is in itself a cautionary tale to be careful when tinkering with your own shoes. Even a small adjustment can affect a lot. If you're in pain, you need to know why before you can figure out how to make it better. I needed examinations by doctors both general and specialized, x-rays, MRIs, gait assessments, and functional assessments before we had any kind of grip on things, and it has taken shoe lifts, custom orthotics, ten pairs of shoes, dozens of hours of physiotherapy, hundreds of hours of massage, three exercise modalities, fifteen years, and half my liver to get to where I am, trying to make shoes that might fuck me up.

Please, for the love of GOD, do NOT use this blog's advice to make shoes for other people's nonstandard feet. I urge you to make use of every medical professional, medical resource, scientific study, and experienced shoemaker in existence before you rely on me. "Fuckups trained and competent medical professionals made when making shoes for me" could be an entirely separate post, so imagine how much worse things could be without all their training. Modern medicine has been essential to figuring out what the fuck is wrong with me, and figuring out which shoe modifications will help me and how they will work.

(And do not give me that "Well back in the OLD DAYS people didn't need--" crap. You know what happened to people like me back when we went barefoot or wore shoes made by the town cobbler? We were called cripples and we walked with sticks. If we needed to get someplace we couldn't walk to and were lucky, someone strong could carry us, or we could ride on an animal or in a vehicle. If we weren't lucky, we dragged ourselves around on the ground and didn't get very far.

I love the past, with its depth and richness. I love dressing up in its old clothes to feel what it felt like. I know that people with disabilities have always been loved and valuable members of human society. But it's precisely from knowing the history of disability that I can truly appreciate just how powerful and revolutionary modern medical science is. It's only by actually finding my spiritual forbears, people with disabilities like and unlike mine who lived centuries ago, that I can understand just how precious the unearned gift I have been given is, living in an era where scientific knowledge and medical treatment can benefit me.

[mimzy-writing-online]

Some Blind Things I (and actual blind person) Have Done

I talk all the time about what’s realistic for a blind person to do and how to write a blind character who isn’t a complete media myth of touching faces and super powers... soooo, part of that is knowing what kind of things an actual blind person (me) fucks up doing because I’m blind.

These moments include: Me sarcastically telling people I cannot see the thing they’re doing. Moments where I have zero manners. Moments where I do have manners. Making people uncomfortable because they’re staring at me. Great phrases like, “I have too much ADHD to count to eight.” and “It’s literally illegal for me to drive.” and “Wait, who are you?” “That’s not how we talk to people Mimzy.” My cats’ growing concern that I can’t see them or tell them apart but continuing to love me. Channeling my inner Toph Bei-Fong. Updates on the ongoing insomnia writing.

There’s no chronological order to them, I’m not sure there’s going to be any order to them at all, but it’s 3 am and I can’t sleep and it’s called the Late Night Writing Advice Blog for a reason.

(I definitely did not have to double check my own blog title while typing that, definitely not)

Note: This list gets a little long, but it’s a funny read and I was up until 4:30 (this note is from a future Mimzy who’s almost finished posting this, after 1.5 hours)

Additional Note: Feel free to send anons with commentary or reblog with commentary because I would love if someone enjoyed this. Like, these are stories of my life, please appreciate them.

The Things!

-My best friend and I hang out mostly at night because of his 9-5 job, and he still lives with his parents who probably don’t like me so when we hang out we’re mostly driving around on random adventures and coffee/tea runs and late night dinners. 

So it’s night, and my night vision is awful and I have to wear sunglasses anyway because what I can see is painfully bright headlights so yeah I see basically nothing.

With my best friend, I have

1. after asking him a question: “Did you nod at me and I just didn’t see it.” “I did nod.” or after waiting long enough for a response he’ll realize what he did on his own and say, “I was shaking my head no, sorry.”

2. Reaching into total darkness to touch his shoulder and touched his armpit instead.

3. Dropped something from my bag onto his messy car floor and asked him to find it for me because it all looks blurry and grey-black down there, even without sunglasses

4. Sensed he was going for a high five and I gave him a perfect high five. Surprised, he wanted to test it again. I completely missed.

5. “We’re passing the oil refinery, so enjoy hearing, touching, smelling, tasting that.” plus 3 other identical jokes on the same drive. “Hey, can you stop making blind jokes, I’m starting to hate them these days.” “When did that happen?” “When one not-great classmate slash sort of friend made them all the time.” “That’s a shame.” “Blind jokes from sighted people are also super repetitive. The only blind jokes I seem to like are from other blind people.”

6. Him: “You’re rolling your eyes behind your sunglasses, I can tell!” 

7. Once we saw snow once our way driving home from Las Vegas. It was March, it was after midnight, and the warmest it had been at any point in that night was 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4.4 degrees Celsius. That’s a real comparison?? That’s a scary number to an American who’s barely ever left California. We were driving through the mountainy area of California where the temp really drops and for three seconds we saw snow in the wind. Well, he saw it. Something moved, it was small and flaky but like... that was actually snow and I couldn’t see it? (this was three, almost four years ago)

8. Last weekend we drove around the rich neighborhoods to look at Christmas decorations because I love Christmas lights because for ones light actually looks pretty instead of painful and I can see it at night without hurting, so it’s nice. I love the pretty visual things. Blindness will not take the pretty visual things from me! And the decorations just make me so happy and I wanted to do that last year but never did, so we did that this year

9. I also told him about the cripple punk tag on Tumblr last weekend and he was delighted to know it exists because he’s got other chronic health issues including downright awful knees.

Other blind things not directly involving my best friend

1. I have paused writing to ask a sighted person if it’s realistic for my sighted characters to see X item from Y distance away. Usually my dad with his stupidly perfect vision.

2. Realizing I’m forgetting what sighted people can see. It’s been four years since I saw like a normal person. And all my sighted memories are literally blurry from age.

3. But I still have dreams where I see normally. And then dreams where everything is too bright like in real life and I cannot see and what is happening???

At home, specifically

1. I have three cats who I can’t tell the difference between. I have a small black and brown tabby cat. A black and orange tortie cat who is slightly heavy but medium build. An all black cat who is huge and has the longest fur I’ve ever touched on a cat. I cannot tell the difference between them until I’m up close. Especially if the lighting bad.

2. Tonight I almost set my laptop on top of Remy, my brown and black tabby, because I didn’t see here a foot away from me, curled up next to my leg, somehow blending in with my orange and blue comforter. Her concerned look I did see and was horrified by my almost fuck up and apologized profusely for.

3. Cannot see Felix, my black cat, half the time if the lighting is bad and have almost sat on him, put my feet in his face, tripped over him, etc. because he blends into the shadows and oh my fucking god I cannot see that.

Note: Remy cuddles with me all the time. Felix adores me but will not be caught dead cuddling anyone because dignity, but if he’s in my room and nobody’s around to see he’s insistent on cuddling. Rio (black and orange tortie) is devoted to my mum, and she knows she makes me nervous when she suddenly jumps on me and I get really shifty and squirmy and not fun to cuddle with, so we’re cool and I give her pets but she doesn’t usually crawl onto me unless she wants to make my mum jealous.

4. Can sneak up on family members and friends because I move so quietly, so at least there’s that. Not a blind thing, but it makes up for some things.

5. Have walked up to someone I thought was a friend, realized I don’t know them, and the first thing out my mouth was “Wait, who are you?” and then a close friend (and the party host) grab me by the shoulders and say, “That’s not how we talk to people,” and just like, where are your manners Mimzy, wtf, but I never saw that stranger again so it’s okay.

Side Note: blindness aside, I do have a habit of just rudely speaking my mind in not-appropriate settings because I just don’t care and don’t have the anxiety to at least act like I care. They’re very satisfying, but usually very rare moments.

6. Please stop moving things around the house!

7. “What do you mean there are cobwebs?” *Shines a flashlight at the dark corners of my room* “oh my god...”

8. Me, to my family members, “Please close those curtains, light hurts. Please turn off that lamp, it’s too bright in here.” *me, later turns off most of the lights in the house* Family members: “Why is it so dark in here? I can’t see.” *Me, channeling my inner Toph Bei-Fong* “Oh no, what a tragedy!”

9. Mum is the only one who vaguely appreciates my light sensitivity because she also has snow vision (a mild case) and has a little light sensitivity, sometimes, on her bad days.

More Not Quite Appropriate Things!

There are so many things that I say only to realize that there is a very nearby stranger who heard that out of context and it sounded so bad.

1. Best Friend (while I’m walking down stairs just fine, by myself, don’t need anyone’s help, I can do it!) “There are eight steps.” “I don’t need your help.” “I know but--” “I’m fine!” “I’m just trying to help.” “I have too much ADHD to count to eight anyway!”

“I have too much ADHD to count to eight anyway,” is exactly what two strangers heard while walking right behind me.

Why would you sneak up on someone who’s so obviously blind??

2. “Sea foam green is an ugly color anyway.” I was in a mall, it was well lit and I was using my cane and managing with my crap vision, but I managed to see that specific color I hate on a dress right next to me, and the woman walking on the other side of the mannequin display heard that and did a double take on my obviously blind self.

Or so I’m told by my mom who could see what happened.

3. Similar to above, I was in the Artist Village in San Diego, which is a huge tourist trap, and I was sort of a tourist too, but it’s freaking outdoors, so I have the cane and sunglasses. And I’m in an Artist Village (very visual thing) with my parents, so out of place. And this random dude was apparently staring at me. Cannot see him, absolutely no idea which direction my mum is pointing towards, everything is blank and weird and not see-able, but I turned my head and by some miracle looked directly at him and he freaked out and looked away.

4. “Oh yeah, make fun of the blind person!” sarcastically, but loudly, somewhere public after a joke a friend had made that I was actually okay with.

5. “Driving and hiking are my two biggest weaknesses,” said out of context to people who didn’t know I was blind.

6. “I forgot you were blind.” “Well I didn’t.” More channeling of Toph, I think.

7. “Why can’t you drive?” *points to cane* *he does not get it* “It’s very illegal for me to drive.” *does not get it* “They’re blind dude,” classmate says. “Very blind.” “You seem to get around just fine,” says the man who only see me indoors with the very best lighting scenario for my vision. “Yeah, but that’s because I have the cane.” “So?” You seem just fine, he seems to think. How dumb are you? I definitely think. “Why do you need the cane?” “Because I would die if I didn’t have it. I have almost died. People would die if I tried to drive.”

8. Later: “Did he think you could just drive and use your cane to feel the road or something?” “I guess.”

9. More questions from other people who don’t know me very well asking why I can’t drive. “Because it’s illegal.” Their confusion is wondering specifically why it’s illegal rather than thinking I’m not actually blind. I explain the laws in the driving handbook, because I have read it (unlike some people I guess. How did you miss the ‘drivers must be able to see at least 20/40 with their best corrected eye” and I haven’t been in that category for two years.

Note: My day blindness came two years before my vision acuity reached visually impaired status. So, like, two years of wishing I had a cane but thinking “I’m not blind enough” and still being terrified in certain situations and risking my life walking around without one or some sighted guide.

Similar Public Things

1. I can see indoors pretty well so I get by on prescription glasses and no cane (I see 20/70 - 20/100 with glasses) but sometimes the mall is crowded and nobody gives me space and I’m just not comfortable getting so close to people, so I bust out my cane (and maybe my sunglasses too) so I look extra blind and people will give me the space to walk without running into someone.

2. Have also done that just because the indoor lights were also too bright and I need my sunglasses.

3. Have stared at my phone in public with cane/sunglasses, or tried taking photos with it, and I get so many weird looks because blind people see nothing I guess, none of us have any vision at all! (read sarcasm)

4. Walking into a coffee shop I’ve been to before and I know they change their teas all the freaking time. Also got the cane. “Hi, can you tell me what iced teas you have right now?” “Oh, they’re all on that sign.” *blank look* Do you not realize I’m blind? I’m thinking. “What kind of black tea do you have? Do you have any tropical black tea?” (because they usually do and I love tropical black tea, and they did that day too, so I ordered that.)

5. I cannot read menus. Those restaurants that have the menus above the register are awful, evil. Cannot read. In the wonderful days of my childhood I didn’t have prescription glasses for my moderately not great but still mostly functional vision (my dad has perfect vision and no concept whatsoever about what it’s like to not be able to see those things!) So imagine my parents dragging me to restaurants like that and I’m 10 years old and supposedly can read perfectly fine but I cannot read that menu and I think it’s some personal character fault of mine that I just don’t know how to read those kinds of menus, so I have to ask my mum to help me choose a food to order and eat, and then that’s the only thing I ever order any time I ever go back. So, I’m quickly getting sick of those places because I only eat one item there and I want to try something new with a restaurant with those nice hand held menus, but those are sit-down restaurants and apparently they cost more money, sooo...

6. That was a rant I went on with my best friend last weekend

Side note: It’s almost 4 am, my mum just woke up, saw the light on in my room from under the crack of my door and said hi. I’m at a point right now where she just expects it and isn’t one to judge (unlike my dad who has zero insomnia because he has hypersomnia and I don’t know how humans do that)

Side Note Ten Minutes Later: My laptop is at 10% but I plugged it in because dammit I am finishing this tonight and it will have all the things.

7. “Hey, where’s the trash can? I can’t find one.” *also mistakes a trashcan and a human being just sitting still. All the time* “Why not just litter then?” best friend asks, knowing exactly how I’ll respond. “I have manners!”

8. I hate traveling even a little by myself. My orientation and mobility skills with my cane aren’t that bad, but they’re not good enough for me to feel comfortable walking around by myself anywhere that isn’t super familiar with routes I already have practiced and memorized (school, close friend’s houses or apartments, the blocks in my neighborhood I’ve walked 500 times coming too and from school or walking dogs with my parents). Anywhere unfamiliar or wide/open or crowded or God Forbid, OUTSIDE is a source of terror and will not let my traveling companions leave me alone for longer than a few minutes and certainly not walk away on my own.

9. Will not go to bars because I present female and I am visibly disabled and that makes me look like an easy target and why would I risk that unnecessarily?

I’m gonna cut it off here. This is a long post, and I need to just finally go to bed. Goodnight. I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to send anons with commentary or reblog with commentary. I’d like to know that someone liked this.

[mymyhowtheturntables]

Feeling a lot like will getting manipulated and shit on by everyone in his life atm, when all I’m doing is my Very Best All The Time. If you don’t care to see the person behind this blog absolutely infodumping about the shitshow that is the past year of their life, absolutely do not feel obligated to read this ❤️ put your own mental health first my loves, read ahead if ye dare...

TW if you choose to read on: mental health, physical health, and all the struggles within. I’m going to be extra cautious tagging this to filter out as many things as possible, but lmk if I should add more or even delete this.

So almost exactly a year ago, I got sick. I tested negative for the flu, mono, strep, basically every illness they could test for. It was extremely difficult to breathe, get out of bed, swallow, basically all that fun stuff that comes with a horrendous virus or infection. It passed after about a week, and I had maybe five days of getting back to near healthy. Then one day I was in Walmart with my roommate, and suddenly my legs hurt so bad I couldn’t walk. This pain progressed over the next few days sending me to and from the doctors office because I was 20 and there was no reason for me to be basically crippled. With the pain came severe weakness in my thighs and an even worse sort of chronic fatigue than I’d had the previous decade of my life. I ended up having to move because of mobility issues, and ultimately had to drop out of college to pursue pain management and with the hopes of eventual rehabilitation.

I spent months in aquatic physical therapy, and drove hours a week to see general practitioners, rheumatologists, neurologists, physiatrists, a cardiologist, and even an orthopedic. None of my tests came back remotely abnormally, and all of my doctors assured me it would pass. Spoiler alert: it hasn’t. Then covid hit, and I found myself stuck in Vermont without access to any doctors or help. My poor health has alienated me from friends and family, because no one can really understand what I’m going through. And that’s so fucking hard, to exist in a world where all we want to do is feel seen but no one can live in our shoes.

I’m 21 now, and on seven different pain medications with no more answers than I started with. I walk with crutches and canes, and need a wheelchair if I’m to be on my feet for more than 15 minutes. I can’t work other than Instacart, which ruins my legs for days. I can’t run, or hike, or drive far, or really do anything that used to bring my days some joy. I’ve been fighting severe mental health issues since before I was even 10, and I have such little fight left in me. I find myself hating those who love me just because they won’t let me go, and I really don’t know who is more selfish; me for wanting to be done with all this, or them for keeping me against my wishes.

I just really can’t find the good in this, or even the okay. And that’s the crux of the issue. I’m not physically, mentally, or emotionally okay in the least, but I still have to pay rent and buy food and cook and take care of everyone around me. I have to wake up everyday and choose between showing people how bad it is, or putting the up facade that they know and love. They say they’ll love me no matter what, but when I’m upset it just upsets them and when I hurt it just hurts them. I don’t want them in pain, but I can’t pretend that their sympathy or empathy does anything other than make me feel guilty of being a burden.

Sharing things doesn’t come easily to me at all, I’m too traumatized to let people read me and I don’t outwardly react to things. There’s a reason I’ve never shared this, and am only doing so on my side blog. Even my fiancé doesn’t know what’s going through my head. That’s on purpose. I don’t think he could understand what it’s like to be told that I’m the scourge of society everyday. I should be healthy, I should be cis, I should be working, I should be in school, I should be okay, but I can’t be.

I don’t have a good way to wrap this up. I’m suffering, but then again, aren’t we all right now? The worlds so fucked up, and I don’t know how much more I can take. I don’t know if anyone even cares but I don’t want to worry anyone who could read this, so I want to make sure y’all know: I’m safe, and I’m present in this moment and will continue to be in the future. It’s just all so fucking hard. But this is the life I was born to live I guess, and it’s the only one I have. I hope you are all in the best place you can be right now, and I appreciate each and every one of you ❤️