shapelymorphoachilles

[shapelymorphoachilles]

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[shapelymorphoachilles]

Among other things, I’m a voice actor. I’m starting to question if I want to keep perusing it.

I’m based in Canada. I can’t move to LA for all the reasons you’d assume. I’ve been trying for two years while working a demanding 9-5 and recovering from an injury that has turned into a disability.

I have other hobbies I could more easily monetize, if I wanted to. Not more easily because it wouldn’t require the business dedication, but because selling myself as the product, selling my “version” of a role, is so goddamn hard.

Obviously the hardest things are the things worth doing, but two years of auditions and the only thing I’ve recorded for someone else was for free at my job. I’ve spent so much money on demos and training and I just. I can’t afford to keep going if I don’t book anything.

I am in a discord for a podcast and their admins had set up a question of the week. It asked, if money was no option, what would you do as a career?

I said I’d go into voice acting.

One of the hosts—a professional actor and entertainer—replied to me and said nah, don’t do it. Between the industry being busted and AI it’s just not worth it. If I were getting started now I wouldn’t.

I think about that a lot.

My next expenditure has to be a trainer to prep my commercial demo, and a booth with better soundproofing. I know how to do it, I can DIY the hell out of it, but… is it worth it?

Hopefully in a few years I’ll find this again while I’m waiting to see the premiere of the Laika film I’m in, or when I’m looking at fan art of the TTRPG character I’ll plan on Dimension 20 (yes I am a cliche) but right now… right now it feels like I’m throwing pennies I don’t have into a bottomless wishing well and talking to myself for nothing.

This isn’t fun. I wanted to do this because it didn’t crush my soul like my day job.

And yeah, every job has a shitty part. But when my partner got me a birthday Cameo from Anjali Bhamani saying “follow the fun!” to find success, I was hoping there would be literally any fun to follow.

Right now? I’ve lost the trail of fun.

I guess I need to find the fun again, because if I can’t, what the hell’s the point?

#voiceacting

[shapelymorphoachilles]

I hate that I have to keep on being positive and optimistic and do my job while everything is on fire.

Not just the world, because that is in fact literally on fire in some places and metaphorically and politically in others.

But also my father’s alcoholism has gotten to a point that I just can’t anymore. I’m a grown adult. I don’t have to deal with the abuse or the “just ignore him when he’s being like that” or the talking to me like I’m stupid. He’s been giving me the silent treatment and honestly the worst part is that it feels like that man who was my hero growing up is actually a coward and a hypocrite.

Please insert all caveats about how it’s a disease and we need to give people with substance addiction grace and kindness and so on.

He offers my partner and I financial help unprompted and then accuses us of taking handouts.

He tells my partner he has a problem, tells my mother he’ll get help, and then tells me there’s nothing to be done, no problems here.

He gives me the silent treatment when show my partner and I communicate and I support him.

Does he think I’m judging him? Or maybe he sees me support my husband in a way he wishes my mum would’ve supported him when he was going for his dreams, or when her family was overstepping? Maybe he sees that I’m not his little girl anymore. I don’t know. Maybe I’m fully off base, or maybe he just hasn’t had anything to say to me in a few weeks… but I doubt it.

Either way, it breaks my heart.

[shapelymorphoachilles]

I stood up without help today! It was very exciting.

I hate how exiting but that’s fine.

Trying to focus on the upsides, and trying not to look at the weeks of vacation I have wasted by hurting myself. But also, I’m glad I didn’t have to work in this state. I can, but I’d rather not.

It’s exhausting, being stuck. I only get tastes of it now, versus the multiple years I dealt with it before. The pain is less, too. But I’m reminded, at times like these.

It bloody sucks.

[shapelymorphoachilles]

I should be grateful that my spine is improving again. This happens, sometimes.

I overdo it at the gym or I turn the wrong way grabbing a bowl from the cupboard and something in my spine goes LOL fuck you and suddenly I can’t walk. Husband has to carry me everywhere, and I’m stuck in the daybed in his office, surrounded by all the hobbies I suddenly don’t want to do, besides all I want to do are the things in places I can’t reach.

I want to embroider? I’d have to tell husband how to set up a hoop and which colours to pick. I want to read? How do I pick a book if I can meander in front of my bookshelf—arguably one of my favourite parts of reading.

I know I should be grateful, that this is only “sometimes”. I am extremely grateful for my husband, who never complained when this was our whole life pre-op and a little post-op, and who does not complain now when he has to carry me to the bathroom, help me shower, or take on all the cooking and caring for the menagerie. He lets me bitch about how annoying it is to be stuck, and cheers me on when I can take a step on my own.

This morning, husband helped me stand up, but I made it most of the way to the washroom with a cane. Slowly, but we got there. I got to look out the window at the snow, instead of relying on him to take a photo. That was nice.

But it’s still annoying that I’m spending my time off in bed, unable to do anything that I was so excited to do.

And I’m particularly annoyed that we were being careful, my trainer and I. And yet this.

I don’t want to take away that trying things is bad. I want to remember that recovery has been quicker this time, and that’s due to all the hard work I’ve done, and that it’s important for me to keep doing the work, even at the risk of having this happen again. But fuck does it also make me so afraid to try.

That’s the worst part, I think. Being afraid to try.

There’s a fine line between being careful, and being afraid.

Being careful is doing the thing, but doing it in a way that minimizes harm.

Being afraid means not trying at all, or putting it off and putting it off and putting it off until it’s such an insurmountable task that I can’t make myself do it.

Being careful is lifting only with a professional.

Being afraid is not taking the dog for a walk for months after a bad flare up, because I’m afraid I’ll have one mid-walk.

Being afraid is a spiral. It’s thinking what’s the worst that could happen and taking that question seriously.

It’s being afraid to have my phone more than an arm’s reach away because what if I fall and can’t call for help?

I am grateful the flare up is slowly winding down. I am grateful this is not my 24/7. I am grateful this is my exception, not the rule.

But I am afraid that one day the exception will become the rule. And what will I do then?

I am grateful my spine is improving again.

But I am afraid for the day it doesn’t.

[shapelymorphoachilles]

I (34F) was on the phone with my mom the other day, talking about the garden I want to set up. I mentioned we had to do it in steps, husband and I, because I needed to account for my spine.

Now, she knows what that means, but let me give you some background.

I was 24. Bit of a gym rat, full time job. Some friends, some hobbies. Walked a ton, and often rode the bus to work.

Then one day, I woke up, and I could not move my legs. The pain was excruciating. When I did finally manage to stand up with husband’s help, it was as if my legs had forgotten how to work. I couldn’t support my weight.

For over a year, doctor after doctor told me I had just pulled a muscle. They sent me home with anti inflammatories, muscle relaxants, and opiates. They told me to go for more walks, get a massage, and lose some weight.

For over a year I took their drugs and wondered why they weren’t working. I wondered what I was doing wrong, why I was still walking like my 80 year old grandmother, and why yoga, going to work, or even just sitting or standing, was suddenly impossible.

Over a year later, I found another doctor. He took one look at me shuffling in and sent me for my first x-ray, followed by the first of many MRIs I would have pre and post op.

Because as it turned out, I had fully herniated two discs in my lumbar spine, and partially herniated a third in my upper back. The doctor was shocked I was still walking at all, never mind all the running and yoga and gym circuits I’d kept powering through the pain to do.

Just about six months later, I was recovering from surgery. If they had caught it earlier, maybe they would not have had to scrape off part of the protective casing around my spinal cord, leaving it partially exposed, but hey. When I woke up from the anesthesia, I still cried because it was the first time I’d been without pain for over a year.

Time went on. I learned to walk again. I learned to move. I had multiple back spasms so bad I lost feeling in my legs completely, but I kept moving. I did light yoga at home, and physio, but nothing stressful. After about two years, we decided it was time, my doctor and I. We thought I should try something new. I joined my friend’s casual soccer game.

In the first ten minutes of my first soccer game in over 20 years, I tore my ACL because the cleats I’d been told to wear to prevent turned ankles had caught in the turf. I heard the snap as I went down. It is a sound I will never forget, like a taught rubber band giving up the fight. When I hit the ground? I laughed. Maybe I was hysterical, or maybe because the alternative would have been to cry in a sports dome full of strangers that I’d come so goddamn far, and now this.

More surgery, more time forced to lie down and be still. I did a lot of art. Got really into podcasts. I had a hard time reading because I couldn’t hold books up, and with being on medical leave again my salary was too stretched to invest in more books, especially digital ones.

Here’s a plug if you don’t already know (because I didn’t), your local library probably rents ebooks and audiobooks if you’re not a physical book kind of person. Support your local library.

Anyways. Bedbound. Bored. Already feeling awful about my helplessness. Somewhere in there they discover all the drugs the original doctors put me on destroyed by gut bacteria and surprise! I’m celiac now.

During one exceptionally bad (read: miserable) reaction to a particularly bad gluten contamination, it occurred to us inflammation in my abdomen around where surgery was triggers my legs to stop working, along with things like blacking out, dizziness, nausea, and other unfortunate symptoms. And while husband was carrying me from the bathroom back to bed after a crashing wave of the “other” symptoms, I put two and two together.

I realized I could never carry a baby. Because what is pregnancy if not an eventually tiny-human-sized inflammation of the abdomen.

Now, husband has never been the driver for us to have kids. I want kids. Always have. But when we realized what pregnancy would mean for my body, we talked it through, and we scheduled me in for a tubal ligation.

Husband was all for it, because his priority is me. He would rather never have children, but have me safe and healthy.

Me, I mostly did it so I wouldn’t have to make the impossible choice between my ability to walk or function, and the life of a baby I would want desperately to have, but could not carry.

I was crushed. Still am, really. I see my nephew who is a spitting image of husband at that age, and I wonder if ours would’ve looked like him, too. His Maybelline lashes and thick blond hair. I see the three-generation photos of my grandmother, mother, and me looking identical as time goes on. Would our little one have taken after the Italian side instead? Maybe they would’ve needed the same weird braces I did.

And this past year, when I quietly mourned my miscarriage’s approximate birthday—she’d be 12 this year—I wondered what kind of a kid she would have been. And then I realized she had been my only chance, and I mourned her all over again.

We are a decade out from my first injury, about eight years from surgery. I have worked with trainers and physios and so many others to get stronger. Some days—most days, now—I’m fine. I can work and walk the dog. I can make art, cook breakfast, and sometimes, if I’m lucky, I can lift really heavy things for fun (in a very controlled environment). I can’t walk slowly for long periods, but I have a wheelchair to use in museums and similar events. It’s not ideal, but it is what it is, and I’m grateful I have so many good days.

Then, there are other days. Days when something goes wrong. Days when I can’t move my legs or support my weight, where husband has to carry me to the washroom because I can’t walk on my own or at all. Days I can’t listen to something funny because laughing is painful. Where sex is impossible because the tension of an orgasm is excruciating. Those days—days like today, as I’m writing this—are agony. Physically, but also emotionally. I’m barely 35, and we know my spine will continue to get worse as I age, even if I do everything right. It’s taken so much from me, and it fills me with sorrow, and frustration, and sometimes even rage.

I mourn the time this injury has taken from me, and the future I had envisioned for myself, for my marriage. The freedom to just DO stuff, without having to do the math to see if I can. I mourn never being able to experience carrying a baby to term, and bringing life into the world.

So, anyways. Back to this phone call with my mother, now you know the background.

I mentioned the garden we want to plant this year. That I had to balance the garden with my other side gigs, my work, working on becoming more politically active, and so on.

She said, and I quote, “stop making it sound like you’re a cripple”.

I didn’t know what to say, if I’m honest, and I’m not sure if I do even now.

I did not ask her definition. I was too tired to argue the point, and who wants to make that argument? What would I even say? She’s been here the whole time, after all. She knows my legs stop working sometimes to the point I keep a wheelchair on hand. It’s about 50/50 if I need a cane to walk. Sometimes I vomit or black out because of where the nerve is being pressed. And sometimes the pain and the shame and the helplessness would make me sob but for the face that sob would hurt even worse.

I can’t help but wonder how much she understands, or if she thinks I’m just being dramatic.

I reminded her that just because I’m not full time in a wheelchair, or mostly able to control my plumbing, and not passing out every moment doesn’t make me perfectly functional.

She insisted that others had it worse, and it’s true, they do! But someone else’s being “worse off” doesn’t miraculously make me able to walk again.

I’m not on disability, but I am disabled. I’m an ambulatory wheelchair user. I do the math of spoons or spell slots or whatever you refer to your ability to function in a day, while taking the extra penalties that comes with disability.

I spent a lot of time in my youth being told I wasn’t enough.

I wasn’t skinny enough. Wasn’t tall enough. Wasn’t loud enough, or social enough. Not talented enough to call myself an artist or a musician. Not active enough despite walking multiple hours daily, alongside gym class and dance classes. I wasn’t even good enough at having an eating disorder to really have one. I was harshly restricting calories but still bigger than she approved of. I tried desperately to teach myself to throw up, but no gag reflex meant I failed at even that.

When I found myself falling into self harm territory around 13, I asked my mother for help, she asked, “what do you have to be sad about?” So, not sad enough or self harming enough to get help, either.

So all that, followed by being told I don’t count as disabled because I don’t have it “bad enough”, whatever that means, hurt.

And as I lie here in my husband’s office because it hurt too much for husband to carry me to bed, I wonder when it’ll be enough—and am reminded that it doesn’t even matter. Whether someone else considers me disabled or not doesn’t make my legs magically work. And I gotta ask, how many healthy people have to keep a wheelchair around for when (not if) their legs stop working on a random Tuesday afternoon?

If you’ve stuck it out, goddamn. Welcome. I mostly opened this account because every other social of mine is connected to my name, and my businesses. But today, I couldn’t sit up to write, but I guess I had a lot of things to say.

- SMP