Extremely Vulnerable

“Extremely vulnerable”. I hate that description. “Vulnerable” on its’ own I was okayish with but “extremely” makes me feel like I’m incapable of anything. Or “extremely vulnerable” to what? That’s what you call a woman in a room full of horny men. Not what you call a 22 year-old with two shitty lungs.

I read a quote which I’m sure many people have heard before but I’m going to write it anyway because … well because I can.

“Same storm, different boat.”

I don’t know why it’s so beautiful…it has so much meaning. We are all looking towards that wave that is in front of us, waiting for it to tumble down on us and crash into our boat. However depending on the boat you have the outcome will be different. You have that one couple that end up with a hole in their boat, however everything else is fine. That family who find their boat has completely washed away, but they all still have each other. The group of friends whose window has been shattered by the wave but no other damage. That rich old guy in the massive boat who hasn’t been affected in any way at all. Same storm, different boat. And that’s not to say that the couple with the hole in their boat is worse off than the group of friends with the smashed window. But it is to say that their circumstances are completely different. It isn’t also to say that the rich old guy doesn’t invite the stranded family onto his massive boat. It’s an interesting way to look at life to be honest. We all have to go through it and depending on your circumstances, your motivation, your opportunities you could be in any one of these 4 boats.

So since I was about 5 years old I’ve had asthma. It’s a special kind of asthma; i’m not constantly wheezing and puffing at my inhaler. In fact I’m actually relatively healthy with relatively strong lungs. I can swim the whole length of my local swimming pool there and back under water. I can climb up hills (I mean…it’s a struggle but that’s more to do with me being unfit and not walking up hills regularly). But as soon as my wee lungs catch a virus or an infection, boom…prednisolone, antibiotics, hospital, needles, fun times.

See I started this blog tonight wanting to talk about asthma and shielding during coronavirus, yet the more I write the less I actually want to talk about it. Maybe I’ll be ready to talk about it in other blogs, or maybe I’ll write snippets within blogs so that you can gradually find out more about my situation. Now I have to try and think about a topic to talk about.

William Wallace. First thing that came into my head so here we are…on a Tuesday night at 21:23pm writing in my blog about William Wallace. I’ve had a mini obsession about him in the last week or so. Basically when I was younger in schools we would learn all about the history of Scotland and how them dirty English scum (sorry I don’t mean that) came over and tried to take our country. However I never really liked that era of time with the swords and the instant death so I didn’t ever take in any information or facts from school. I feel like all we would ever learn about was about people dying on the battlefield or people randomly murdering people just because they had pissed them off. And then I had a couple weird dreams about someone with a sword chasing me on my school field, but then him not actually chasing me but chasing Captain Jack Sparrow, stabbing him in the heart and him dying and me waking up terrified of swords and this instant death that was so common at that time. Anyway, so last week I watched Braveheart for the first time and oh my god, I have never felt so patriotic in my life…which is a confusing feeling considering I was born in England and moved up to Scotland when I was 5. My excuse is that half of my English side were Scottish and I moved up way before I actually learned anything so technically I am more Scottish than I am English. Anyway so I was watching Braveheart and feeling all so patriotic so I then decided to research more into that era and ended up watching Outlaw King which is a more accurate representation of what would have happened during that era after William Wallace had died.

He was born in 1970 in an unknown region of Scotland and died at the age of 35 (ish) on the 23rd of August 1305 after being hung drawn and quartered by the English. He was a mad man according to some and a heroic knight according to others. Whatever he was he stuck by his country and fought until his death for freedom from the horrid grasp of the English reign. To be totally honest with you, the way the government is going right now, we’re in need of a William Wallace type figure to break us free from the grasp of the English into a world of independence.

Sorry if there’s any English readers out there, I promise I have nothing against English people, especially being from there and having many friends from England. For some reason I’m just feeling extremely patriotic towards my Scottish roots at the moment. Can you really blame me?

Anyway, I’m not even sure what I have spoken about in this blog tonight…Covid-19, William Wallace and patriotism. What a fun read this must have been. But I need to stop writing now because my leg is getting all tired and twitchy.

Stay safe xoxo