So why did I get a tattoo with the word ‘strength’ on it? Why did I choose this word? I could have chosen any word but I chose this word. I could have chosen the word ‘love’, I could have chosen the word ‘happy’ or ‘imagine’ or anything really that stands out but no, I chose ‘strength’. Why? because all throughout the difficult times in my life whether it be running a marathon or going into a shop or recovering from my breakdown I’ve needed strength. That’s why I chose the word ‘strength’.
In this blog, I want to highlight how I’ve been using strength to push through the difficult times I’ve had and are still having, like extreme anxiety, like about to run a 26.2 mile race, like having to go into a shop and ask for something. Just yesterday I had to go to my Peer Support Group but I was really anxious, on top of this I was also worrying about what the builders were doing as I wanted to know whether I could get my car out. This constant worry and fear eats away at me but what gets me through in the end is the strength to succeed and overcome these difficulties.
Going Into A Shop – An example of when I get anxious is when going into a shop, sometimes you see it, sometimes you don’t, but it’s there all the time. I worry about a lot of things and I’ve had to step back a lot because the anxiety is simply too much. Before going in, I often make a list of what I need in my head, I record in my head whether I’m paying cash or card and have a rough idea of how much it’s going to be. It’s not just that though, I have to make some sort of small talk with the shopkeeper so I have a statement in my head of what I’m going to say. Having Asperger’s, it’s so difficult, having to think of all these things, but with a little strength things become possible. Of course this doesn’t work every time and there has been many occasion where I’ve walked to a shop and then turned around because I’ve been afraid to go in. What i need to remember though is to use my secret weapon, that being ‘strength’.
“With a little strength, things are slowly possible.”
At The Start Line Of The London Marathon – Let’s cast out minds back to my running days, I was running 13 miles every week, I was as fit as a fiddle but I had never run a marathon before. This was a scary time for me, I had never run past 13 miles so it was going into the unknown. I left my Dad and was without him for a good hour before I started to run. I was on my own and the only way to get home was to run the distance I needed to run. This was scary and starting behind a giant cardboard cut-out of the Queen made this even more frightening. Anyway, I set off and got going, it was scary at the beginning as there was so many people but I did it, I used my strength to get to the half way mark. I felt like I was going to faint on mile 20 but I used my initiative and had some water. To this day, I don’t know how I managed to run that distance, I suppose I used strength to get me through.
So there we go, strength is the key to overcoming many of my difficulties, although keeping my strength up is so, so hard sometimes the only way out is to rest and reset your strength for another day.
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