YOU get some looks when you are living a normal life with a spinal injury.
It is a constant flux of surfing furniture around my house and using every wall outside my home to stay upright.
I am always one step away from a fall.
That means one step away from finding my face up close to the pavement – with onlookers thinking I am drunk.
Managing the stares is something I have kind of got used to over the years.
I tell myself people are just curious.
I’m still nursing my wounds from my latest fall off the bike and looking at my paralysed fingers thinking they might actually be broken.
I didn’t feel it at first as my head and neck were more of an issue, but as they got better I started looking down at my hand and thought those fingers don’t look right.
It does sometimes feel like each week is a struggle.
All I want to do is focus on sport and compete, however living with such a high level spinal injury makes that goal feel almost impossible.
Those who have followed my journey will remember how I spoke about the idea of amputating my paralysed arm.
This notion came back to my thoughts this week when I saw an athlete in America remove her arm.
In her words, she described it as a weight which had been lifted from her. She felt free. This sent my mind into overdrive.
By Thursday morning I was looking online again to find a doctor who would cut it off.
I started to think ‘okay, I am not losing my arm’ but I would be gaining freedom from this heavy weight attached to me.
With all this going on and the possibility of a fresh lockdown, I decided to go back to where I almost see as home now and that is a small shack next to Kingston and my surfing Rasta family who I spent most of last year with.
Scans, paralysis and London drivers just start to break me mentally.
Over the last few weeks all I kept thinking about was my death and I started to feel trapped.
Trapped by my tumour and paralysis. I know this is not a good headspace and the best place for me to be is somewhere I can train and think about sport.
As I write the last line of my column this week, the plane is just about to take off.
In 10 hours, I will be in Kingston, Jamaica and free of my thoughts.
Maybe I am running.
I am not sure, all I know is 11 years of tumours and this spinal injury has left me in a place mentally that either requires constant psychological meetings or sport.
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