So a year ago, I decided I ought to have a blog. I did a bit of reading, looked at other people’s blogs and fussed for a while about exactly how I should set mine up. In the end the chose the name Heart Shaped Peg (because I’m much harder to fit into a standard round hole than even a square peg) and to use WordPress, played with themes a bit, (actually quite a lot) wrote one entry for last year’s Bi Visibility Day and promptly got distracted by other things. It happens to a lot of blogs – you see links to their long forgotten remains all over their friend’s social media and in the second and third pages of Google searches.…
I did mean to come back and write more here – but I was busy for a bit, and then in the winter the shape of my life changed rather dramatically.
It was the sort of avalanche of change that starts with a few pebbles falling. My Mum has had health problems for years. In November her diagnosis of “mild cognitive impairment” got upgraded (or downgraded, I’m not sure) to full-on dementia. And then in December, her long-standing chronic knee problem suddenly flared-up and became acutely disabling – so she started using a wheelchair. We went on Family Christmas Holiday as planned (my brother and his families live in Eastern Europe) and while we were there Dad hurt his back and also had impaired mobility. It took him several months to get better (or as close to better as he’s going to get – he still gets some pain but is back to riding his bike and holding down several part-time jobs). And so I became a part-time carer.
My parents live in London, I live on the south coast, so I’ve spent a lot of time on trains. Which was particularly fun after New Year when there was extensive flooding causing delays and cancellations. I’ve been travelling up there for a day or two or three almost every week since Christmas. It’s eaten most of my spoons.
It’s left me feeling like a bit of a failure as an activist. I’ve had to step back from co-chairing BothWays. I’m saying for now that I’m taking a year out but that’s just a guess – I don’t actually know what the shape of my life is going to be like in a year’s time. And of course we don’t know what the shape BothWays will be like in a year’s time either – maybe the current co-chairs and committee will be so successful that they won’t need, or want, me to come back. I’m currently working on hand-over –which turns out to be a surprising amount of work (well, it’s a moderate amount of work spread over a surprisingly long time). It feels very strange to let things go and am trying very hard not to fall into the trap of going “ooooo but I wouldn’t do it exactly like that”. It’s good that things evolve and I’m really pleased to be watching the group building on the strengths of its current committee.
As a carer, even “just” a part-time one, I felt that my sexuality and relationships – and my own disabilities – have often been invisible. It’s easy for my biological family, social services, medical staff and others to see me as “the spinster daughter” who doesn’t have a paid job and not see my complex web of Poly relationships and responsibilities – and all the unpaid activist-y work that I do. Also in the same way that older people are generally assumed to be straight so are their carers (it seems like thinking about carers’ sexuality is far too close to thinking about the sexuality of the people they care for and apparently that’s icky and nobody wants to think about it…)
I know there are plenty of other Bi and Poly and disabled carers out there but it’s not something that gets discussed very much (probably because we’re too busy actually being carers). So I decided to facilitate a carers’ meet-up at this year’s BiCon – which was fascinating, and painful and affirming. And I’m going to try and write about it here… well, I’ll try to do it sometimes, whenever I’ve got the time and spoons at the same time as having something to say…
And who knows what other adventures and activism I’ll find myself caught up in now that I’m not focused on running a local Bi group…
