HAWMC 2012 Day 5: Ekphrasis!

Today's HAWMC prompt is to go to flickr.com/explore and to write about whatever random image shows up. I love the idea of this post and the concept of ekphrasis in general. Writing about art is interesting because we all have very different responses to visual art. My random picture:

Hollister by Debrah Leonard

Hmmm. My first reaction was to be less than thrilled. I had lots of thoughts and directions to go in with last year's picture for the ekprhasis post. But this year, I have trouble relating to or connecting with this picture. Young girls in short shorts having a good time of some kind. Sure, I've had lots of fun times with friends and I occasionally wear (longer) shorts, but this image does not at all connect with me, so it might be a bit of a stretch to connect this to my health.

This makes me think of something my neurologist said to me once: "You can't be like a normal 25 year old. Your peers are building careers and going out and having all kinds of fun every night. You can't sustain that kind of lifestyle." I'm paraphrasing, of course, but that statement really struck me. Not that being "normal" is important to me, but it kind of sucks to not be able to be normal. I have to constantly be assessing and conserving my energy levels and responding appropriately to fatigue. I have to get a lot of sleep. I only have so much time in a day in which I am truly cognitively with it, so I have to choose how to use that time carefully. I can't work a regular, full-time, typical hours job. (Not that I'd necessarily want to, anyway!) If I do go out for a late night of fun with friends, I pay for it for days. I am "borrowing spoons" from the future when I do "normal" things like this, and it makes it very hard. Being normal is definitely overrated in my opinion, but it still stinks that I don't have the option to be normal, that I don't have the option to be like my peers.