Life Extraordinaire Yet Ordinaire

Many people look at me with admiration. They marvel at my strength and willpower in living with my genetic disease that robbed my health and normalcy of life.

I disagree entirely that I am strong and have unsurpassed willpower coz I simply did what needs to be done in order to live just like everyone else. I didn't receive any training to cope with my condition – it is all trial and error. Learning on the job.

I am a fan of heuristic approaches. In fact, everyone should be. Formal education can’t teach you what life is. You have to go through the wringer on your own.

I run a feminist page, and I often come across anti-feminists who say that women take menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth as their biggest achievements. Still, male feminists love to brownnose women that menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth are things men can never go through and come back alive. LOL. Biological functions are not achievements. Men can certainly go through menses, pregnancy, and childbirth without dying. Women deal with all that as they come – there is no special prior to manual attached on our bodies for us to refer. We cross the bridge when we come to it and exercise the power to choose in whatever aspect that allows us to.

I faced immense difficulties as my disease progressed. I had to relearn everything – the very basics of life-skills like eating and bathing by myself. I face a lot of difficulties while working as well. My back won’t cooperate with the volume of work I have to complete. Pounding migraines feel like somebody is sledge-hammering my skull from the inside. But not working is not an option. Complaining is not an option. Doing what it takes and carrying on are the only options.

I have never met another person living with Wilson’s Disease. I have no one-on-one guide as to how to deal with my medical condition. So, I came up with my own solutions. This is what every single creature on this planet does. This is why we have the internet today. This is how the world works – as new problems emerge, we create solutions simply because if we need to survive, we have to evolve.

At the same time, our lives are as diverse as our palm prints. Everyone’s struggle is different, yet equal. This is why I am not strong or an inspiration. I am just a part of this whole scheme of things called life.

We didn’t have a reference manual to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. Past pandemics like the Spanish flu and the bubonic plague offer no panaceas. We had to make the best of a bad job and come up with new solutions – global lockdowns and social distancing. The world panicked at first and now has learned to live side by side with the coronavirus with a semblance of a microscopic war. It is the same with everyone – only the nature and the size of the battle differs.

We are all more similar than we are different. The day we imbibe this principle fully is the day when humanity truly triumphs. Nothing encapsulates this better than this scene from the movie Armageddon.