I had a terrible and embarrassing experience within the last week. I can’t even believe I’m gonna write about it it’s embarrassing but that’s what this site is for. This experience definitely falls under the dark category in the travails of Bethy Bright and Dark.

I shit myself in my overnight sleeping chair. It was as bad as you are imagining. I had poop everywhere. On the plush upholstered chair, of course, but also all over my body from my butt and legs to both of my hands. My caregiver her for this nightmare was my live-in helper who has become more like family than a paid helper. I’ve written about Evona on these pages before. You can read that post here.  She had to cut my sleep shorts off of me. Cleaning me up was job number one but as I’m sure you can imagine that task involved my sit-to-stand lift as well as the tools necessary to clean me up like wash cloths, soap and a million baby wipes.

Thank god I own two perfect sleep chairs there was somewhere to put me. Getting the soiled chair out to my deck where it could be aired out and be out of the way while Evie dealt with taking care of me was a task that fell on Evie as well as the only other person living in my home charged with caring for me as well as everything that comes with being a live-in presence in my home. Evie has had to take on the role of maintenance woman, cleaning woman and everything else you can imagine. It’s a lot for one tiny person to handle. I literally don’t know how to live now without Evie. I rely on her for every aspect of my life as a fundamentally disabled adult human. The pressures of a role like this are difficult to overstate.

Once I got to my wheelchair all clean and shiny, the mind games began. How could I make this experience one that would help me to grow and accept my reality and not one that would crush my spirit and my ability t0 view this disabled life as a life worth living? Even more real was the question of just getting through the rest of my day after having had something so traumatizing happen? How do I sit at my computer and play crosswords without losing my mind? My brain is often my worst enemy. That voice inside of me that tells me this is no way for an adult human middle-aged woman to live and yet…it is the only life that’s been given to me by whatever higher power you happen to believe in. I have to find a way to tell that voice to shut the hell up. I have to use both sides of me to deal with that niggling voice. It’s a task I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

It’s Evie who helps me deal with my brain, too, a reality that surprised me when she moved in two years ago. Evie carries an unimaginable weight just by acting as my caregiver not to mention the added weight of being the person that deals with every single detail of day-to-day existence but becoming my closest most treasured friend is the biggest surprise. This feeling is 100% mutual. Evie and I have become attached for life. She claims to relish her life here at the Hidden Falls Home for Wayward Women. She claims to love the house, the environment and me without boundaries. How did I get so lucky to have this little miracle dropped into my life as if this kind of love between human heterosexual adult women is something easy to come by. It’s never happened to me before in nearly 60 years of life. Losing my fundamental way of life along with the loss of my ability to use my lower body comes with this wonder. This relationship I have no basic right to but somehow has become the very foundation of my life.

Our world trains us to be shocked by this kind of surprising reality. I’ve lived a long and magical life full of love but I could have never seen this kind of relationship coming into my life. The Dark takes over. The negative voice of my brain has learned to scream at me. The volume is shocking for a human as basically fortunate as I’ve been in my life. This disability that I couldn’t see coming stole my ability to believe in basic human kindness. In love. In happiness. In goodness. How do I let it win? How do I allow the Dark voice to get so loud? Even with all of the wonderful mental health professionals I’ve been blessed to have in my life, I still haven’t figured out how to give the Bright in me more space. The Bright knows how amazing this life is even as a fundamentally disabled human. The Bright is still there, I just know it! How do I bring her to the forefront? How do I make that voice louder and allow her to rule my brain putting this damned persistent Darkness in a different, less dominant position?

I know enough after nearly 60 years on this planet to know that there exists both Bright and Dark in all of us. I’m not unique. I just have been blessed with this ability to recognize it actively – to have words to write about it. Not to mention an audience for these words! How could one human middle-aged disabled woman be so lucky (while also being so terribly cursed? See? There she is again…that Dark loud bitch!).

On the day of the big, terrible shit-chair happening I somehow let go and went with the good. I  did my crosswords. I sat at my computer and played games while Evie somehow managed the reality she was facing. She never asked for this kind of all-encompassing job. She merely took on the role of being my live-in caregiver. Who could see all of this coming? Who would even want a job like this? Evie tells me she does. She is the person who wants this kind of job. She tells me she needs me in her life as fundamentally as I need her. She loves having me in her life even with all of the baggage! This is another gigantic  miracle in this Bright and Dark life I’m living that I could have never seen coming.

The aftermath of the big bad shit chair day included lots of figuring out how to function while moving a giant sleep chair from room-to-room as we made due with my one clean chair for living day-to-day in two rooms where the chair was needed for both lounging and sleeping. Not to mention what was needed to clean the soiled chair. What a literal mess. But I lived through the big bad shit-chair experience with my most important relationship intact. How did I get so lucky?