When people talk about the challenges of being small, there are things that are obvious- the not being able to reach the top shelf, or not being able to walk into a shop and try on any pair of jeans. Everyone knows about that. I always knew about that. From an early age, my size was spoken about, even though the years I chose not to speak about it, I still knew, I knew things weren't going to be as straight forward as some of the people around me... I knew there were big things I needed to overcome.... but no one ever told me about the little things.
No one told me about the bottles my hands would be too small to open, or the folders my arms were too small to hold. No one said about the rucksacks that would be too strong for me... or the chairs I'd struggle to climb.
No one told me that my energy would be mainly used, not in the bigger of tasks, but instead in the small things. The things no one talks about. The things I see so many others do with ease. When you google dwarfism, no finding is going to tell you "Struggles to open drinks bottle". No finding is going to admit the struggles that no one seems to talk about. So how is anyone supposed to know? How was I supposed to know?
A few months ago, a close friend of mine Rebecca, tweeted a tweet that has stuck with me, about a similar situation she was in, with a bottle of orange juice.... and one sentence that stuck with me.... "It's taken me an hour to open a bottle of orange juice. That's not what everyone else does!"
That got me thinking. And she's right. It's not what everyone else does... similarly to how I just had to ask my classmate to open my drink for me... I don't see anyone else doing that either?
So when we say... "We can do anything anyone else can do?"
The thing is we can't... not really. We can find alternatives and ultimately the outcome we reach can be the same... but we can't do everything that others can. That's not negativity... That's just fact.
But let's turn this around a minute... I may not be able to open a drinks bottle like all my friends can... but hey.. I don't see many of my friends competing in dance nationals. Or even studying a BA in university. So I can't do things they can, but some may say I can do things they can't... or perhaps haven't even considered yet.
Does that make these little things any easier? No, because in the mix of preparing for a dance national or in the whirlwind of university life... you think I really want to spend more than a semi fraction of a second of my day contemplating how I'm gonna open a drinks bottle? No. Because they're just little things... but sometimes the little things are the big things. The things that no one talks about, the things that no one teaches you how to overcome...
Sometimes the smallest hurdles take the biggest jump and whilst I may have mastered the trains.. I've taught my body to dance and learned how to juggle a BA degree in the mix of life's medical hurdles... I'm in fact still learning... to do all the things that my body presents me with every day, all the things that I discover as I go.. about the things that we need to start talking about.
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