Why, as a disabled person, I shouldn't apologise for living life.

As a chronically ill disabled person, I spend a lot of my life at specialist appointments, with doctors and in the hospital. I've been chronically ill since the age of 16, when contracting infectious mononucleosis left me with myalgic encephalomyelitis. From then, my health spiralled, and I am currently diagnosed with more than five chronic physical conditions, along with multiple mental health conditions. I'm under the care of two physiotherapists, a neurologist, a cardiologist, a mental health specialist, an eating disorder specialist, an ehlers danlos specialist, a respiratory clinic, and a surgeon. So needless to say, trips to and from doctors' offices and hospitals can get tedious very quickly. This tends to impact my mental health quite severely, as whilst I am very aware that a lot of people have conditions that take up more time and are more life-limiting than mine, I feel like I'm spending my entire life in medical environments. Constantly wondering when my next flare will be. Wondering when my next admission will be.

This is why, when I am able to take a spontaneous day out, trip away, or just do something fun that doesn't fit with a healthy person's idea of how I should behave as a sick person - I refuse to apologise.

On a Tuesday morning in November of last year, I woke up unable to walk. I had partial paralysis, and my nervous system was sending signals entirely to my left leg as opposed to my left and right in equal measures, so my right leg was suffering hemiparesis. I'm incredibly lucky that I regained the ability to walk mostly unaided by March of this year, though my wheelchair and crutches are in the living room within easy reach as my neurologist informed me it's inevitably going to happen again with my condition.

This is why I will not apologise for having fun. For dancing in public. For spending a little extra money to go further afield so I can explore a new town. For walking when I can. For proving that disabled people don't have to fit your narrative and that sometimes we have fluctuations in symptoms, we have pain free days, or we choose to push through them to carry on living. I have been given the gift of movement in both legs again and I refuse to let it go to waste.