I talk with my fingers. It is much easier for me to express myself often through a keyboard than through speech. Somehow it bypasses the bit of my brain that wants to censor myself. Over the past six years since I started writing on The Moonlit Path Blog it has been a haven and a joy, I have rediscovered my voice after years of keeping it hidden.

In the past two weeks I’ve been recovering from a flare up of RSI. This, it seems, is part of a larger physical capacity issue that I’ve been attempting to dodge for the past fourteen years. I have retrained four times in that period, attempting to find a way to work which brings in some income while allowing me to live as healthily as possible.

I can’t dodge it any longer.

I am (temporarily I hope!) silenced, as I avoid my keyboard. I find that without it the words don’t come, before I sat down here there were no words, yet as I type they float to the surface, eager to wriggle into the light and onto the screen.

I am giving up my muggle business in order to be able to keep some capacity for writing and the simple tasks of daily life with a wonky body. I have to rest much more than I would like to be able to function. I am not particularly tired or unwell, my body simply won’t do what I would like it to or work in a way that was formerly “normal”.

I wonder what a life without a “proper” job will look like, apart from the shifts in practical consideration (adapting to financial circumstances etc) what will the days look like? I like to be “useful”, purposeful. What will I “do” when I can’t use my limbs reliably? Perhaps everyone who lives with disability faces this, I know my mother did. How to find your place in the world when your capacity is “other”.

It will also be, I expect, given time, great gift. While I feel that I should be enthusiastically heading off with a fistful of plans it feels like a quiet time. I have crossed my Rubicon. Acceptance comes slowly, my biggest challenge is to overcome expectations I hold of myself and my output in the world.

My writer’s block and limited capacity has led to a silence. A pause to say goodbye to one way of life, as I spend these weeks wrapping up my business and a whole way of working. A moment to breathe after pushing myself further than I ought to, to own my body and her needs as she is.

Baby, I was born this way.