pandakatiefominz
Wraith
"But she has been wrapped in bubble wrap. Not just since this baby's conception, her whole life. I know that we all think of her as this incredible, undefeatable force of nature, but she is disabled, Alec. We forget, but she is, and to the outside world, before anything else, she is blind. From her birth, she has spent every day in a world not made for her, facing the realities of her condition. Imagine I gave you a handful of bills, all intermixed. 1s, 5s, 10s, all jumbled in together. And then I asked you to give me seven dollars. You would be able to sort them, and give me the right amount. Something as simple as that, Daizi cannot do. And she will never be able to. Once she paid twenty dollars for a three dollar cup of tea, because she had the wrong bill, and the barista was dishonest, and she only learned about it later when she had to come home to ask me to sort her change. That's her reality. Despite all of that," He waved his hand, "she has succeeded in making a life for herself, something many people with her disability struggle to fully achieve. But do you think it has never stopped being frustrating? When she has to ask the server to read her the menu, or when she needs to ask me if her socks match? Or when I am asked if I am her carer? Sure, some days it rolls off of her, but there are days where it tears her up inside. It will break her heart the first time this baby asks her a question she cannot answer because of her disability. But it is her reality."
He paused, moving his chair slightly closer towards the bed, "And now she is pregnant, and the already limited list of what she can do narrowed further. She is forbidden from taking hot baths and lying on her back, simple things you and I take for granted. And as she and the baby grow together, it will only continue to tighten, because the bigger she gets, the harder mobility will be for her. Have you noticed how sometimes she runs out of breath doing things she could have done easily even a few weeks ago? And in the coming weeks it will be difficult for her to tie her own shoes. So imagine--your eyes do not work, at all, and you have spent your entire life coping with it, and learning to live with everything which goes along with that, and then the rest of your body starts fighting you, and makes simple things like getting up out of bed or off the couch difficult. Would you not enjoy the simple, normal activities like cooking dinner too? I know you just want her to be safe, and that you want the baby to be safe, and I want that too, more than anything I want that too, but we are not her doctors, and it is not our call. Absolutely she sometimes tries to do too much, and absolutely she can be better about accepting help, but sometimes we need to take a look at what she is trying to do before trying to dissuade her. Cooking is not strenuous, and there is a middle ground between your extreme and hers. You could have offered her a stool so she could cook while sitting at the counter, instead of standing over it, for instance. Because I know her well enough to know these months are longer for her than they are for us: she is never separate from her reality."
He paused, moving his chair slightly closer towards the bed, "And now she is pregnant, and the already limited list of what she can do narrowed further. She is forbidden from taking hot baths and lying on her back, simple things you and I take for granted. And as she and the baby grow together, it will only continue to tighten, because the bigger she gets, the harder mobility will be for her. Have you noticed how sometimes she runs out of breath doing things she could have done easily even a few weeks ago? And in the coming weeks it will be difficult for her to tie her own shoes. So imagine--your eyes do not work, at all, and you have spent your entire life coping with it, and learning to live with everything which goes along with that, and then the rest of your body starts fighting you, and makes simple things like getting up out of bed or off the couch difficult. Would you not enjoy the simple, normal activities like cooking dinner too? I know you just want her to be safe, and that you want the baby to be safe, and I want that too, more than anything I want that too, but we are not her doctors, and it is not our call. Absolutely she sometimes tries to do too much, and absolutely she can be better about accepting help, but sometimes we need to take a look at what she is trying to do before trying to dissuade her. Cooking is not strenuous, and there is a middle ground between your extreme and hers. You could have offered her a stool so she could cook while sitting at the counter, instead of standing over it, for instance. Because I know her well enough to know these months are longer for her than they are for us: she is never separate from her reality."
