AniaR
05-10-2012, 12:21 PM
I wanted to share something thats going around online right now, and also share a bit of a personal story that I hope will inspire you all. I know for those of you still waiting to get tails, trying to make them, or even swim in them this hobby we all share can sometimes seems like an impossible goal. You watch others doing it and think, why can't this be me too?
Or maybe there's something else in your life that seems impossible to deal with, or achieve, and it's got you down.
So, I was born 4 months premature, back in the 80s when babies born premature just didn't live. My parents were told not to get attached to me because I would die. I weighed 1lbs and 11 ounces, I was so small you could fit me in your hand and I had to wear cabbage patch kids clothes. I spent the entire first year of my life in the hospital, a good deal of it in an incubator, and there are only a handful of photos of me from that time. I was not a pretty baby, I was a little robot baby with wires and tubes coming in and out of me. But since Im sitting here typing this you know the story has a good ending, because I'm still here.
For the rest of my life, I started doing things doctors always said would be impossible. I was very sick growing up, I had a lot of symptoms of cystic-fibrosis and would wake up in the middle of the night frequently with my lungs filled with fluid. At the time they didn't know what this was- but now a days they know that one of the drugs my mother was given to try and stop my early labour directly caused a defect in my lungs that still hangs around today. Doctors still continued to tell my now divorced parents that I wasn't likely to live through childhood.
Again, you know the story ends well because I did. I actually got sent to Disney through the make-a-wish foundation which was kinda cool.
Through my teens years I was often sick, sometimes bedridden, and on top of it all I was dealing with a mentally ill, alcoholic, abusive parent. My mother has borderline personality disorder, and through my whole life she'd always been an alcoholic, quite abusive, and very mentally off the norm but for whatever reason when I was a teen things sorta came to a head and people finally started paying attention. My mom went in and out of the mental hospital, and despite all the things that were going on she still managed to maintain custody of me. People with BPD are often very charming and quite brilliant liars, and Ive learned through therapy and reading books on the subject of having a paret with BPD that many abusive parents are able to manipulate the system to keep their kids and this is what my mom did for many years. I felt hopeless and like happiness was impossible. I was being beat up mentally and physically, put in really dangerous situations, faced constant neglect (no food, filthy surroundings, basic needs not being met) and I turned to suicide.
I thought it was my only way out, that what I was facing was impossible. Thankfully, I didn't do a very good job (let's be honest here, I didnt actually want to die I just desperatly wanted out of my situation and to get some help) and the courts finally granted my Dad custody of me and I got into therapy.
Living with my dad was no cake walk. It was a million times better than my mom, but they were insanely strict, had some issues with my younger sisters, and were very religious. I figured though, if I could make it through what I did with my mom I could make it through a dumb curfew and going to church ;)
Flash forward a few years to my late teens and early twenties and out of the blue I am riddled with chronic pain in my legs. It gets so bad that even having pants or blankets on them hurt, I can't walk, Im in constant pain, and I don't know why. I have a million other health things going on, and obviously a lot of post-traumatic-stress from what I lived through with my mom, and once again things feel impossible, like how in the heck am I going to get through this.
I finally get some diagnoses and Im labelled with a bunch of different illnesses, and then when it comes to my chronic pain the doctor I was seeing had a very grimm outlook. He explained that there's not a lot of data out there for people my age and older who have survived being born so early. So they dont know what happens as the babies grow. but the trends show that many of us die in our early to mid twenties even if we have a healthy childhood/teen years and for a lot of the people in the studies that did die things started out like what I was experiencing. If that wasn't totally scary enough, the doc says he thinks there's a large chance I have MS as I have all of the symptoms.
I dont know how much you all know about MS but I basically felt like between all the diagnoses I got and what he said about people like me I felt totally lost and like I had an expiery date that was coming up very soon. I got very very depressed. I spent most of my time in bed, I was encouraged to go to physiotherapy but I couldnt be bothered because the whole process hurt so much and I didn't see the point. I still had my mother in my life, and even though I wasnt a kid she was as abusive and selfish as ever. My father refused to admit or face what I was up against feeling very much like if he just prayed and had faith I'd be okay- a nice notion, but I needed actual support and to talk to someone. I had just started seeing my current boyfriend before this all started and he went from having a semi-normal GF to one who was in bed all the time. I was scared he'd leave me.
It all just seemed impossible. And that's when I discovered Annette Kellerman, and Hannah Fraser :) I bet you can guess where this story goes now! I started researching them both, from my bed with my laptop. Annette - I wont go into too much detail because I wrote an article about her being published that I'd love you to read- but she went through a LOT of what I went through specifically on the illness end. She used swimming as a means of combating her illness. And Hannah Fraser, I mean here was a woman living this mermaid dream of mine that I thought I was the only person to have, and she's so amazing an elegant, and awww hell how could I ever hope to be like that?
One day, I just sorta snapped, and realized if I was going to die then gosh darnit I'd die happy and doing things I always wanted. So, I started swimming. I'd never properly learned to swim but just being in the water was a lot easier than my physiotherapy. It still helped my body a lot and soon enough I was actually able to do physiotherapy. I got in with a new doctor- one who'd take a multidisciplinary approach to addressing my health concerns, and I got a therapist. I finally cut off all contact with my mom and I started saving and fundraising for a tail. Life kept going and I got stronger and healthier under my new doctors regeme. He didn't think I had MS at all but had a theory that I did indeed have a neurological disorder common in pre-me kids that tended to only rear it's ugly head after we become adults and stop growing. With all my other illnesses not being addressed my body combined with this went into overload. So he focused on addressing all my issues, lowering my stress, and treating my PTSD. I still had all the tests for MS, and despite it all I had all the symptoms except one very important one, and low and behold, I no longer had an expiery date!
I worked my butt off, taking victory when I could walk down the stairs instead of slide on my butt, happy when I could get through a regular day without too many pain breaks, before I knew it the days I felt healthy started to outnumber the days I didnt, and very soon were less and less. I basically learned to walk all over again, learned to get my balance (really hard and embaressing to do when you're an adult lemme tell ya haha) and started to make the needed changes to my diet and environment that sound simple enough but really werent.
Low and behold, I was finally able to get my first mermaid tail. A stretch vinyl one without a monofin, but a start. And I'll be damned if I didn't wear a life jacked the first time I jumped into the water with that thing on :P just in case. I used my "practice" tail to learn the basics of mer-swimming, and even though I wasn't the best it just boosted my confidence so much more, and gave me something to work toward. I started planning who I would be as Raina and how I would get there, I started setting goals, and when I was finally able to afford a realistic tail I could hardly wait to get started.
And you know this part of the story, where I hit a wall with my unusable tail. I was crushed. I felt like i'd basically changed my whole life and worked toward this point, and now I wouldn't even be able to do it. With no other options for a tail I was crushed. I tried to make do, but it really drove me crazy how close I came to my goal only to have something happen outside of my control that felt like a "choke" in the last moment. Again, I felt like my dreams were impossible. Why even try? I felt real negative, and then a friend brought me into mer yuku :) and you know how that goes too.
I finally got my tail fixed thanks to one of the amazing friends I've made- Raven. And I could use it. A year after that I finally got the realistic tail of my dreams and my mer-persona and business is finally where I always wanted it to be. I made these things happen, with help and encouragement, when everyone else said I couldnt, when even I thought I couldnt. I found a community in all of you, and I also found genuine people in my real life.
Latley I have to admit, I've been feeling really down. There are no jobs in my field and with cuts being made to education I am starting to get that negative feeling, here I've spent 8 years of my life in university trying to prepare for this moment and it's taken out of my hands. I feel like I'm up against a wall again, something impossible.
And then this little gem showed up in my news feed on fb http://www.godvine.com/Man-Barely-Able-to-Stand-on-his-Own-Does-the-Unthinkable-Amazing-1476.html
It's a video of a man who was disabled and really overweight. He could barley walk with assistance. He was told things he wanted were impossible. With a little help and determination, he turned that around and I think a lot of you will be bawling by the end of the video. I know I was. Seeing it was the little reminder I needed to go, hey, you've gotten through worse Raina, you'll get through this.
So I thought I'd share my story with you, as well as the story of this man, in hopes you'll feel inspired and know that you CAN achieve your dreams. I know for some of you it may feel like it's impossible. You'll never have the time, you'll never have the money, you'll never get the things you want, but you can and you will! I was told I'd end up not walking, and look at me swim! Haters can tell me I suck all they want when it comes to my swimming but I am prouder of that than most anything else. You will always have haters, you'll always have people that zero in on that one thing you've worked hard on and feel insecure about and push that button. But they do that to feel better about themselves, and really because they just dont understand what it's like to overcome something like that.
So I hope this inspires you, and I'd really love it if people would share their personal stories about hard things that they've overcome! Or how they've gotten where they are in their mermaid journey. <3
Or maybe there's something else in your life that seems impossible to deal with, or achieve, and it's got you down.
So, I was born 4 months premature, back in the 80s when babies born premature just didn't live. My parents were told not to get attached to me because I would die. I weighed 1lbs and 11 ounces, I was so small you could fit me in your hand and I had to wear cabbage patch kids clothes. I spent the entire first year of my life in the hospital, a good deal of it in an incubator, and there are only a handful of photos of me from that time. I was not a pretty baby, I was a little robot baby with wires and tubes coming in and out of me. But since Im sitting here typing this you know the story has a good ending, because I'm still here.
For the rest of my life, I started doing things doctors always said would be impossible. I was very sick growing up, I had a lot of symptoms of cystic-fibrosis and would wake up in the middle of the night frequently with my lungs filled with fluid. At the time they didn't know what this was- but now a days they know that one of the drugs my mother was given to try and stop my early labour directly caused a defect in my lungs that still hangs around today. Doctors still continued to tell my now divorced parents that I wasn't likely to live through childhood.
Again, you know the story ends well because I did. I actually got sent to Disney through the make-a-wish foundation which was kinda cool.
Through my teens years I was often sick, sometimes bedridden, and on top of it all I was dealing with a mentally ill, alcoholic, abusive parent. My mother has borderline personality disorder, and through my whole life she'd always been an alcoholic, quite abusive, and very mentally off the norm but for whatever reason when I was a teen things sorta came to a head and people finally started paying attention. My mom went in and out of the mental hospital, and despite all the things that were going on she still managed to maintain custody of me. People with BPD are often very charming and quite brilliant liars, and Ive learned through therapy and reading books on the subject of having a paret with BPD that many abusive parents are able to manipulate the system to keep their kids and this is what my mom did for many years. I felt hopeless and like happiness was impossible. I was being beat up mentally and physically, put in really dangerous situations, faced constant neglect (no food, filthy surroundings, basic needs not being met) and I turned to suicide.
I thought it was my only way out, that what I was facing was impossible. Thankfully, I didn't do a very good job (let's be honest here, I didnt actually want to die I just desperatly wanted out of my situation and to get some help) and the courts finally granted my Dad custody of me and I got into therapy.
Living with my dad was no cake walk. It was a million times better than my mom, but they were insanely strict, had some issues with my younger sisters, and were very religious. I figured though, if I could make it through what I did with my mom I could make it through a dumb curfew and going to church ;)
Flash forward a few years to my late teens and early twenties and out of the blue I am riddled with chronic pain in my legs. It gets so bad that even having pants or blankets on them hurt, I can't walk, Im in constant pain, and I don't know why. I have a million other health things going on, and obviously a lot of post-traumatic-stress from what I lived through with my mom, and once again things feel impossible, like how in the heck am I going to get through this.
I finally get some diagnoses and Im labelled with a bunch of different illnesses, and then when it comes to my chronic pain the doctor I was seeing had a very grimm outlook. He explained that there's not a lot of data out there for people my age and older who have survived being born so early. So they dont know what happens as the babies grow. but the trends show that many of us die in our early to mid twenties even if we have a healthy childhood/teen years and for a lot of the people in the studies that did die things started out like what I was experiencing. If that wasn't totally scary enough, the doc says he thinks there's a large chance I have MS as I have all of the symptoms.
I dont know how much you all know about MS but I basically felt like between all the diagnoses I got and what he said about people like me I felt totally lost and like I had an expiery date that was coming up very soon. I got very very depressed. I spent most of my time in bed, I was encouraged to go to physiotherapy but I couldnt be bothered because the whole process hurt so much and I didn't see the point. I still had my mother in my life, and even though I wasnt a kid she was as abusive and selfish as ever. My father refused to admit or face what I was up against feeling very much like if he just prayed and had faith I'd be okay- a nice notion, but I needed actual support and to talk to someone. I had just started seeing my current boyfriend before this all started and he went from having a semi-normal GF to one who was in bed all the time. I was scared he'd leave me.
It all just seemed impossible. And that's when I discovered Annette Kellerman, and Hannah Fraser :) I bet you can guess where this story goes now! I started researching them both, from my bed with my laptop. Annette - I wont go into too much detail because I wrote an article about her being published that I'd love you to read- but she went through a LOT of what I went through specifically on the illness end. She used swimming as a means of combating her illness. And Hannah Fraser, I mean here was a woman living this mermaid dream of mine that I thought I was the only person to have, and she's so amazing an elegant, and awww hell how could I ever hope to be like that?
One day, I just sorta snapped, and realized if I was going to die then gosh darnit I'd die happy and doing things I always wanted. So, I started swimming. I'd never properly learned to swim but just being in the water was a lot easier than my physiotherapy. It still helped my body a lot and soon enough I was actually able to do physiotherapy. I got in with a new doctor- one who'd take a multidisciplinary approach to addressing my health concerns, and I got a therapist. I finally cut off all contact with my mom and I started saving and fundraising for a tail. Life kept going and I got stronger and healthier under my new doctors regeme. He didn't think I had MS at all but had a theory that I did indeed have a neurological disorder common in pre-me kids that tended to only rear it's ugly head after we become adults and stop growing. With all my other illnesses not being addressed my body combined with this went into overload. So he focused on addressing all my issues, lowering my stress, and treating my PTSD. I still had all the tests for MS, and despite it all I had all the symptoms except one very important one, and low and behold, I no longer had an expiery date!
I worked my butt off, taking victory when I could walk down the stairs instead of slide on my butt, happy when I could get through a regular day without too many pain breaks, before I knew it the days I felt healthy started to outnumber the days I didnt, and very soon were less and less. I basically learned to walk all over again, learned to get my balance (really hard and embaressing to do when you're an adult lemme tell ya haha) and started to make the needed changes to my diet and environment that sound simple enough but really werent.
Low and behold, I was finally able to get my first mermaid tail. A stretch vinyl one without a monofin, but a start. And I'll be damned if I didn't wear a life jacked the first time I jumped into the water with that thing on :P just in case. I used my "practice" tail to learn the basics of mer-swimming, and even though I wasn't the best it just boosted my confidence so much more, and gave me something to work toward. I started planning who I would be as Raina and how I would get there, I started setting goals, and when I was finally able to afford a realistic tail I could hardly wait to get started.
And you know this part of the story, where I hit a wall with my unusable tail. I was crushed. I felt like i'd basically changed my whole life and worked toward this point, and now I wouldn't even be able to do it. With no other options for a tail I was crushed. I tried to make do, but it really drove me crazy how close I came to my goal only to have something happen outside of my control that felt like a "choke" in the last moment. Again, I felt like my dreams were impossible. Why even try? I felt real negative, and then a friend brought me into mer yuku :) and you know how that goes too.
I finally got my tail fixed thanks to one of the amazing friends I've made- Raven. And I could use it. A year after that I finally got the realistic tail of my dreams and my mer-persona and business is finally where I always wanted it to be. I made these things happen, with help and encouragement, when everyone else said I couldnt, when even I thought I couldnt. I found a community in all of you, and I also found genuine people in my real life.
Latley I have to admit, I've been feeling really down. There are no jobs in my field and with cuts being made to education I am starting to get that negative feeling, here I've spent 8 years of my life in university trying to prepare for this moment and it's taken out of my hands. I feel like I'm up against a wall again, something impossible.
And then this little gem showed up in my news feed on fb http://www.godvine.com/Man-Barely-Able-to-Stand-on-his-Own-Does-the-Unthinkable-Amazing-1476.html
It's a video of a man who was disabled and really overweight. He could barley walk with assistance. He was told things he wanted were impossible. With a little help and determination, he turned that around and I think a lot of you will be bawling by the end of the video. I know I was. Seeing it was the little reminder I needed to go, hey, you've gotten through worse Raina, you'll get through this.
So I thought I'd share my story with you, as well as the story of this man, in hopes you'll feel inspired and know that you CAN achieve your dreams. I know for some of you it may feel like it's impossible. You'll never have the time, you'll never have the money, you'll never get the things you want, but you can and you will! I was told I'd end up not walking, and look at me swim! Haters can tell me I suck all they want when it comes to my swimming but I am prouder of that than most anything else. You will always have haters, you'll always have people that zero in on that one thing you've worked hard on and feel insecure about and push that button. But they do that to feel better about themselves, and really because they just dont understand what it's like to overcome something like that.
So I hope this inspires you, and I'd really love it if people would share their personal stories about hard things that they've overcome! Or how they've gotten where they are in their mermaid journey. <3