The Disability Lane

Simply Shanah harbors both professional and personal milestones. In 2019; I made the decision to separate the professional and individual experiences. I wanted to have a space specifically focusing on my work as a disability rights advocate, share lessons learnt from the many spaces I am invited to, observations about disability rights in Uganda and above all documentation to act as reference for young people with disabilities.  

Cue The Disability Lane blog. Initially, the idea was to have a writing space then along the way, I developed social media platforms for it that is Twitter and Facebook. The Disability Lane solidified into a digital civic space to raise awareness of gender and disability concerns for social justice and inclusion of women and girls with disabilities. I am figuring it out as I go along. So far, I love how it is growing. I have been able to feature activists in the disability movement both domestic and outside Uganda to share their knowledge and expertise on topical discussions.  

It has made me realize that content creation and curation is not so easy, especially when you are doing it single-handedly. However, it has given me the opportunity to explore my creativity and expand knowledge of design tools like Canva. 

Since I consider myself committed to gender and disability development, I am excited to discover the level of impact it has on disability, gender and representation in the digital space. 

The Break and Everything Inbetween 2

A continuation from my first entry here

I practically changed my sleeping schedule to keep him ‘virtual’ company while he nursed his dad. His dad passed away without him even asking me to go see him. Yes, it was during the pandemic but asking is not a bad thing. I asked him to come over while I was at a work event so I could see for myself how he was doing, in his angry moment, he made that request seem like the dirtiest thing he had ever been asked. I had yet to feel like trash as an adult until this second experience of him. If that was his intention, he succeeded.

Do you know what I got out of all this? A stress injury because of texting. This guy NEVER called. Emotional and physical trauma because the onslaught of emotions was too much for me to bear. My chest ached every time I recalled this experience. Because of all this, I returned to spontaneous public and private meltdowns. My most memorable days of this were the breakdown at DFCU Bank, my workplace and a field trip to Kasese. 

One morning at work; it hit me that I should have stayed home because I was not emotionally well to function as an employee. My heart ached so much that my eyes smarted from the tears I was trying to hold back. I took a bathroom break to cry and then returned to my workstation. Then came the field trip to Kasese. While there, my colleague kept asking, ‘Shanah, what is wrong?’, she asked this more than once for two days. On the second day, I told her not to ask me again. That night, after I returned to my room, I broke down because of the implication of his leaving the country without telling me. It felt like the worst betrayal ever. I had not done anything wrong to this person for him to act this way nor treat me this way. 

After crying for over two hours, I took a sleeping agent to calm my nerves. The last thing I wanted was to fall sick because of the intense emotional distress and being so far from home.  

You would think I was done with tears, no? I had one more flood left in me. I went to DFCU Bank, Ntinda branch to withdraw money. I found the bank closed. I had come from far. I needed the money. I did not have any other day to make the trip again. The frustration of this and everything bad I was dealing with brought on a public breakdown. I cried and sobbed like I had lost someone. The sob fest included snot, strained veins on the head and sweat. The attendants had to open the bank because I was becoming a public spectacle. They took me inside, gave me some water, asked me what was going on. Eh! I cried through all their questions and attempts to comfort me for over thirty minutes. 

Ten months in 2022 were spent feeling the ugly feelings and trying to work through it all so my depression does not worsen. The stress injury does persist when I text anyone for longer than five minutes, and I abandoned prayer. Other than that, I am doing well emotionally and mentally. I may not have published anything in this space for two years but everything that happened between then and now is in my journal. 2023 raked me over the coals, too. But I firmly believe that all that I went through in 2022 gave me the fortitude to handle everything that I experienced last year.  

We can conclusively say that he is the one who was never ready, that is, if he does not have a sadistic streak. In all consciousness, no one deserves to be treated so shabbily especially when they are pure of heart. 

The Break and Everything Inbetween...

TWITTER: @chrislil_gh

Two years ago, I took an abrupt break from publishing in this space. It feels like a lifetime. Reading through old posts to find my footing brought back tons of mixed emotions especially with the entries of 2021. There is a lot of dirty water under the bridge to muck through while I go about acquainting myself with Simply Shanah (the blog), and the readers that leave comments.  

Are you EVER ready? 

That title marked my last entry in 2021. At the time; it was a cover for what I was going through. what I wanted to write about but could not. I allude to this in the last sentence of the post.

Time has been kind to this wound. It is no longer sore; I can talk about it without breaking into tears; it no longer has the sting of a fresh wound. I will pinch the emotional scab a little. By the way; pinching at scabs is one of my nervous gestures though I do it mostly on my lips. 

Well, I have tried to love the same man twice! Only a handful of people knew this. Both times have been mired in terrible heartbreak. This last time; after I had dealt with the hurt and the pain, I came to the realization that God probably made this person for the purpose of letting me know that a human, I have met in my adult life, has the potential to do away with me, if I am not careful. I wholeheartedly believe this. Nothing can explain why someone comes to another party (who is minding her single business) with declarations of love only to sustain that person in months long texts and eventually ghosting the person. Not once but twice. 

Initially, I was friends with this person. We vibed as friends. I never held any romantic ideation where he was concerned. But I am such a hermit. I take forever to date, and I can honestly say that I have no idea how to relate romantically. 2015 was the one year I tried this dating and being in a relationship with a son of Adam. It did not end that well because we argued a lot, conversations were strained. We drifted apart. 2018; this guy makes his first declaration in one of the worst years of my life, as an adult. It was the year I had the accident. Midway through my recuperation, he ghosted. Who does that? I was physically and emotionally broken. I do not know how I got through that year because I was convinced that I would not make it to 2019. 

Surprisingly, I did. I have had the honor of making some good friends as an adult. One friend in particular kept checking on me, I talked it over and over with my ride or die sister and I survived this horrible experience. I should have let sleeping dogs lie, no? I have countable friends and this person is the one person who knew all the milestones of my life, outside my closest circle of friends. I reached out to him. I told him how deeply he had hurt me and that if his feelings had changed, all he had to do was tell me because I valued our friendship. Another thing I have realized since 2018 is that I value friendships 100 percent while some value their friendship with me at 1 percent. 

He apologised. We flowed once again like we had not spoken to each other in one and a half years. Outside my immediate family, he made my two weeks of hospitalization in 2020 a bearable experience. Late 2020; he kept hinting at his feelings, littering terms of endearment here and there but not being outright until early 2021. I was very shocked to receive a heartfelt hearts day text. From then on it was touch and go. My intuition kept rearing its ugly head, I would tell him my fears and he would brush them off. At the end of it all, my fears did come to life. He not only ghosted me but left the country without so much as a by your leave my way. What made this incredibly hard is the way I found out. I found out from a friend...

To be continued

Are You Ever Ready?

‘I am not ready’. ‘You are not ready’. ‘We are not ready’.

I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and landed on a post a friend had commented on. A woman had written in to a radio station saying that her boyfriend of 5 years is soon turning 30 and wants a positive pregnancy 🤰 test as a birthday present. The woman is 2 years shy of 30 and is not ready. 

This made me think, are we ever ready for a situation? Do we know how ready we are until we are in the middle of it? No. 

Before I braced myself and then some to go for studies, I was a bundle of doubts. 

When a friend of mine sent me the application, I fired him so many questions just to dissuade him from encouraging me to apply. He had an answer to all the questions. To get him off my case, I accepted to apply. I went to office, sat on the application for the day and sent it to him. Late in the night, he told me he had issues with sending it and I told him to leave it. But he convinced me to send it myself. I did that the following day. 

I wrote that off until months later when I received an email inviting me for the interview. This interview. Let me first laugh at myself. 😂 I received the date and time while I was busy packing for the African Women’s Leadership Institute program. It was for 7 days and at a hotel deep in Namugongo while the interview was to be in Ntinda at the former offices of National Council for Disability. You should have seen me try to make it work. 

I had already stalled with the AWLI program and to cancel at the last minute was not right. I thought of turning down the interview because I couldn’t see myself flying from Namugongo to Ntinda but my friend and my  mother convinced me otherwise. I had also read for it like my life depended on it. 

Like in all life changing situations of my life, my brother was around and had use of my sister’s car. When mum informed me that he would pick me up, I told him the time he should pick me up and to bring along the dress I had in mind to wear for the interview. At NCD, someone I know (a fellow woman with a disability) walked into the room and she told me she was interviewing for the same. I told her then that I wouldn’t mind losing the interview to her. They could only take one of us. I interviewed with the mind that she will be the one to succeed. 

Months down the road, I received an acceptance email on a really bad day. I braced myself before opening it because I couldn’t take anymore bad news and was shocked. I didn’t know what to do because I wasn’t expecting to be accepted. I didn’t even celebrate. 😢 

In the period of chasing academic and travel documents plus work commitments, my sister was diagnosed with a blood clot & was admitted to the High Dependency Unit. 

This literally put a wrench in everything. I was just returning from a trip to Iganga when my mum explicitly told me to go stay with my nephew for the duration. I worked and looked after my nephew until his mother was discharged. This set my mum and I back severally. I applied for our visas when the visa office was a day to breaking off for the December holiday. 

January 2020 dawned. We were to travel the first week of January but because we had applied late for the visas… I still harboured doubts about leaving the job, all that was familiar to me (family, friends, weather) and having a doctor a phone call away. In the background, there was also someone’s son. He had just hinted at a tea-date and I kept thinking, ‘what if this has the potential to blossom into something and my leaving kills it?’ I was a mess! Chap wasn’t even proposing but I actually considered the repercussions of the trip. That’s how you know it’s not easy being a girl. 😂

I had misgivings. I kept talking to my senior advisor about most of them and he firmly told me that losing the job should not be cause for me to turn down an opportunity to better myself. If I lost it, there would be something else. I tendered in my request for study leave 3 days to the day of travel while my mum did all the running around shopping and packing. 

On the day of, I had to do more shopping, lunch with my sister Anitsha and continue to pack. I’d also wanted to see my nephew one more time before I left because I was so afraid he would forget me. He’d just learnt to say my name, picked up on the fact that I used crutches and was becoming a little connoisseur of tea. 

Yeah, misgivings and doubts did not go away even while I was going through the student experience. Nevertheless, I went. I lived. I loved. I studied. I thrived. I did it all while I was afraid and do not regret it one bit. 

My point is you never know that you are ready for anything until you are either right in the middle of the situation or walking the steps. All you have to do is take that leap of faith but prepare for the consequences. Like leaving someone’s son yet all he had suggested was a tea-date. 😒 

This post was also inspired by a current situation in my life...

Search My Feelings...

Do you ever sit and scrutinise your feelings? Feelings that wash over you when you least expect it? 

Last night, in a dream, it occurred to me that this guy I have been texting with for the longest time ever, he and I shall not materialise into anything. When this came to me, I thought I’d hurt incredibly but I’ve spent the day searching myself, my thoughts, my feelings over the entire situation and I’m OK. 

We cannot force people into being what they cannot be for us. This is something I’ve come to learn. I guess I should cry over the empty promises, the awakened feelings that invariably end in disappointment and deflation. In years I least expect someone to turn my head, make me believe in the impossible and leave me either in limbo or hanging. I should cry for letting myself dream about stuff I really have no business dreaming about but not yet. There are no tears yet. Perhaps they will come at a later date. 

For now, I feel apathetic. What this person does, who he does it with is entirely up to him. All I know is I’m done. I’m tired of holding onto hope over an impossibility. I’m also tired of pandering to people’s emotions and feelings. 

I wish I could give up on this. On trying to find a partner. But, I feel that I’ve given up on a lot more that  I wanted in this life that to give up on this would be the ultimate let down. Dying alone is something I don’t want for myself and it’s what drives me to give it a go when someone catches my fancy. I try once opportunity arises but it seems it’s never enough. 

I am not hurt that you’ll never grace me with your physical presence, that you really have no desire to see me or see you live up to your promises, no. I’m hurt that you make me want to cease all attempts to find a partner and acquaint myself with the thought of being self-partnered for life, again!

Hang Up On A MAY BE!

 “You can’t be any more available to a person that doesn’t want to be available to you.”- Shanah

I am no expert on relationships because the longest I’ve been in one is fit enough to pass as a 7 - day trial in app purchases world. The period where you consider whether it’s good enough for you to spend your money on it or not worth the expenditure. That’s my love life. 

Over the eyes I’ve been in the longest textship known to woman with one person. This textship has gone through a lot, least of which is the 2 years period of silence because we weren’t on speaking terms. But, as it is wont to do, it picks up where it left off regardless of the hiccups. 

It should be OK. But it’s not. At this period in my life I’m wondering if this is going anywhere at all given that the length of it shows that it’s not. This is someone I have known for over five years and seen socially three times in this period of knowing each other. He says really nice things that make me want to believe never calls or even so much as asked for a date. 

Current circumstances notwithstanding, I feel that a lot more effort than endless empty promises filled with fully furnished sand castles in the air should be made. A tea date? 

The possibility that this is not going anywhere except in text is glaring at me in the face but I’m caught between calling it quits because I’m being impatient or waiting it out because it just might flourish into something beautiful. I do not know. All I know is I  could be hang up on a “maybe” that might never blossom into an actual thing.

He Called Her At Midnight

"She looks so sad."

"That is one beautiful drawing, what inspired it?"

"Weren't you afraid to show such naked emotion in a design?"

These were some of the comments and questions raised by her visitors. The ones she deigned to let across the front door for she was a private person and valued her solitude. Her hand shook slightly as her index finger traced the lines of a heart-shaped face, big eyes full of incomprehensible sorrow and pink lips pursed in disdain. Save for the pink lips; black encompassed the piece and put forth the emotions that could never be hidden even after the passage of time. 

Looking at her, so dark and laden with emotions; the events leading to her  existence unfolded before her eyes. It took a great deal of effort to bring herself back from the abyss the breakup with Max had thrown her into. There had been days when her despair was too potent for her to get through, days where she turned up to work in full black because that was the only way she could explain her mood and dressing required a lot more effort than she had. Days where she would take constant bathroom breaks at work just to shed the tears in her heart. When the pain was too intense and breathing had become a chore. 

Time was indeed the healer of all wounds. To be able to look back on all that pain and feel a slight niggle of disappointment in the people they failed to be for each other attested to her emotional state. She was even crazier for entertaining the thought of seeing him again. 

“Had he changed? Would he notice the woman she had become? Had their time apart been as hard for him as it had for her at the beginning?” All these questions rotated in her mind like a spinning wheel and almost made it impossible for her to return to the task at hand. One thing was certain, Max was hurting and needed her. That is all that mattered, for now. 

Alexandra gave the piece one last glance and put it back on the mantle. Looking at her work from this vantage point gave her a level of satisfaction she could never get enough of. Art has always been there for her; even in her darkest days, she could rely on it to bring her back from the depths of despair. 

Dawn was soon breaking and she needed to put the finishing touches to the draft she was currently working on for a close friend. He had commissioned a piece from her on a whim so she wanted to knock his socks off with her artistic interpretation of his name. A smile crossed her face as she thought of him. 

Liam. He had came into her life when she least wanted to form lasting ties with anyone let alone a man yet couldn’t turn down his offer of friendship.