Happy New Year everybody! So I am getting married this May (sounds scary saying that)! So I thought I would write a bit about my experience with relationships and how I felt about relationships, being paralysed since I was 18 months old, my struggles, and how I feel now.
Growing up paralysed from the neck down around kids the same age as me I feel was beneficial because, like me, they didn’t know any different; I was never seen as being different to them. I had my first boyfriend when I was 9 years old and we were together for 4 years. Then I started getting thoughts of “why does he want to be with me? I can’t even cope with this every day so how can I expect somebody else to?” So all through my teens/early 20s I wasn’t interested at all. I used to wear pads for bladder function etc. I was ok but I’d get low moods quite a lot. Sometimes I’d go on chat rooms online just for the chat and company, but I still thought I can’t do that to someone (because I always put others before myself). I then had an operation on my bladder called a Mitrofanoff which meant I wouldn’t need to wear pads anymore. When I had the operation it resulted in quite serious complications, which meant I spent the majority of 2 years off and on in my (then) spinal unit, and at one point my family were told to prepare for the worst.
I had a lot of time to think in there and I’d hear patients who were newly injured saying things like “what if I get stared at?” and it inspired me to want to do more. After being in hospital that long, when I finally went h
