Envying Stephen Hawking

This article written by Jenn Vesperman. Used with permission.

I’m sitting in the bath, which is the one place which causes the pain to fade for a time. I think about what parts of the body I’d trade to be well. Would I lose a leg? An arm? The sight of my right eye?

And I think again how I envy Stephen Hawking. His body is failing him, but he still has his mind.
Or disabled athletes.

I know pain. I know that the pain from a back injury affects everything, or the despair and confusion of a psychiatric illness affects everything…

But I have physical pain, physical limitations, damaged systemic functions in every system, and brainfuzz, and emotional ‘lability’, and … it’s everything.

My mother once told me that ‘at least you don’t have to worry that you might kill your own child’. Um. Mum? One of the reasons I refuse to have children is the emotional lability. I could. I’d get tireder, and tireder, and less and less able to control the mood swings. And one day I’d snap out of a mood swing and … well. I get suicidal anyway. Imagine how you’d feel when Dancer called to say we were both dead.

I can’t think straight. I want to think straight. I want to be able to do something. Anything. Give me a physical illness, but leave my mind clear. Give me a mental illness, but leave my body clear.

Let me be like Stephen Hawking. Let me be like a disabled athlete.

Give me something I can do.

Please.