Immunity : Unfiltered

  There is a very particular sort of anxiety that comes with chronic illness . It isn't always “Oh God, something is wrong RIGHT NOW.... what if something bad happens to offset things? Do I deserve good things?" Sometimes it is much more subtle than that. It is the little voice in the back of your head going: “Okay… so when is the next thing going to happen?” Because when you've spent enough time having your health throw completely unexpected curveballs at you, you become rather good at anticipating them. You learn to look for the other shoe. The other ball. The next appointment. The next blood test. The next infection. The next weird symptom. The next bit of paperwork that somehow requires seventeen pieces of evidence, three phone calls and the patience of a saint. Explaining Common Variable Immunodeficiency is brutal. I still can not get my head around how it wasn't something I did to myself somehow.  And then, occasionally, life goes… Fine. And honestly? I don'...

  Well, the last one I did on here, people loved this... so I am once again sharing them on here.  I have read a lot these few days, mostly on my tablet, as that little window into the world is a very good thing I bought myself.. I also managed understand them... mostly.. then there was also the fact that I acquired a couple of new books.. second-hand, but new to my bookshelf if that makes sense!  Heroes and Marvels of the Middle Ages- Jacques Le Goff. (2020)  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ WOW! I acquired this book from a lecture. I was lucky enough that I was given this book my a lecturer on account of office renovations works and suchlike. As per usual, I forgot how to socialise and I sent an email to ask about ym assignment weeks before the fact, owing to the fact that I was spiralling and overthinking, which honestly is my habit. This book is wonderful. The way it is structured is not at all poncy or hard to read. I was expecting it to be really verbose and impossible to break down, and...

It has been a little while since I’ve written here properly, and I just wanted to check in. Firstly… thank you. =) yay!  🌞 This past month has been incredibly full. Busy in the best ways, occasionally overwhelming, and somehow both exciting and nerve-racking at the same time. Summer feels like it’s stretching out in front of me now, full of possibility, and I’m genuinely excited for it… even if there’s a slight wobble of nerves sitting alongside that. Some changes have been deliberate. Others have just quietly happened while I wasn’t paying attention. I’ve also realised that some of my recent posts have become a bit formal. That was never the intention. I think months of academic writing have quietly rewired my brain, and I’ve started writing blog posts like essays. I’d much rather this feel like a proper catch-up than a submission deadline in disguise. So I’m trying to come back to something more honest. More immediate. More chill... Being snooty was never my intention on ...

This semester has been intense. To be fair, summer semesters always are. They condense enormous amounts of work into a shorter space of time and expect you to keep pace. It is, as they say, the nature of the beast. But I think that intensity has exposed something else that I've been carrying around for a very long time. Internalised ableism . I realise now that this is partly why it has taken me so long to write a blog post. I've been standing at a crossroads. Do I pursue what I truly want? The thing that genuinely excites me, inspires me and could lead to a sustainable future? Or do I take the road more travelled and settle for an "easier life" simply because other people would prefer not to put accommodations in place or do the inclusivity checks they proudly claim to champion? The fact remains, I do not thrive in a distance learning situation. I love where I am at right now, and couldn't be more in love with this subject. The disability reforms in the media cu...

Weekly reading reviews ? (and the slightly inconvenient habit of everything turning into autobiography- How very "2010 influencer-chic"...) This week’s reading list looks, on paper, like a mix of classics, travel writing, academic texts, and one very committed detour into moral discomfort. In practice, it turned into something else entirely: a series of books that kept reflecting each other, and me, in ways I did not particularly ask for. Lewis Carroll — Through the Looking-Glass (5/5) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ This is the reread that anchored everything else. I first read Through the Looking-Glass when I was around seven years old. It was the first novel I ever read completely on my own, which already gives it a slightly unfair advantage in my personal hierarchy of books. At that age, I identified with Alice very directly. Not as a character in a story, but as a mode of being in the world: slightly displaced, observant, trying to understand rules that kept changing depending on who was speaki...

Early May always feels strangely bittersweet to me. The light changes almost overnight. The evenings begin stretching themselves lazily across the garden again, the air softens, and suddenly everything feels alive after months of damp British hostility. Even the birds seem unbearably pleased with themselves. One blackbird outside my window has recently begun performing at approximately 5am every morning with the confidence of a West End lead who believes the nation personally requested his return. And somehow, alongside all of that renewal, comes this horrible creeping awareness that the academic year is ending. I genuinely don’t know how I’m supposed to cope with that. This semester has done something to me intellectually that I was not prepared for at all. Somewhere between lectures, heritage work, books piled dangerously high beside my bed, museum visits, essays, and fieldwork discussions, I seem to have fallen completely and irrevocably in love with my subject. Not in the vague “th...