Act Natural!

So I mentioned in my first post that I consider the partial paralysis of my face to be an important catalyst for my beginning to take writing seriously.

Going back a few months to when it all began, the ER doctor explained to me that I have bell’s palsy. The sympathy in his eyes was not because I was dying, or that I could expect to remain disabled for life, thank Gnarlak. It’s simply that I can expect to be mightily inconvenienced for anything from six months to several years. Bell’s Palsy is therefore exponentially better than a permanent disability and significantly worse than the flu, rot gut or a mildly burned scrotum.

I won’t bore myself or you with a detailed catalog of the various inconveniences an unresponsive mug creates, but for the big one. It severely hampers my ability to communicate. Oh I’m much better now, but when my tribulations began I couldn’t really speak without planting a finger firmly on the left side of my mouth. it was the only way I could get that elastic tension needed to make words. I’d dribble, my lips would twist and careen off to the right. The sound “f” would come out as a whooshy gushing exhalation of futility, like a bicycle pump nozzle trying to inflate a kitchen sponge. Raising my voice would send my lips into a pathetic bubbling frazzle of burbling meaninglessness. The moment I attempted to raise my voice AND attempt to say "f" (take as an example, "Fuck I hate my failure to form fluent phonemes") my immediate vicinity would become completely drenched in spittle and my body would be drained of half its fluids.

I got sympathy. THAT was the thing that enraged, embarrassed and humbled me. I’d see a flash of it in peoples’ eyes when I spoke to them - oh shit poor guy. He’s had a stroke. Quick, act natural!” Again, this is not me complaining. I’m way more of a bitch when I’m sorry for myself trust me! But it made me realize that so much of who I am, so much of what I enjoy and pride myself in is bound up in being able to talk to people. I’ve always wanted to write but I never understood just how deeply this forms me.

I need to do this, and if waking up with paralysis does anything for a person, as surely as velvet trousers are a poor choice in hiking attire, it wakes them up with a start. So here I am, fully awake, mildly lopsided and ready, as we Australians say, to give it a red hot go.