Call Me Rocky Balboa

     If there’s one thing you’ll learn about me through this blog, it’s that my mind is constantly going in one-hundred different directions. As such, if you visit this blog with the expectation of some sort of continuity, you’re in the wrong place, hoss. I would call myself a bit of an enigma (Googles to make sure that word means what he thinks it means…okay, we’re good…) I feel like that is a fitting term to describe me at this stage in my life. Quite frankly, I’m hard to understand even for myself on most days.

Focus is a real struggle for me, especially in the last year, and a blog with this sort of subject matter is not something I can take lightly, or just half-ass my way through it, the topic(s) and the people that they represent (Myself included) are far too valuable, and already deal with a severe lack of representation no matter which side of the discussion you land on, for me to just be another voice lost in the noise.

            First, there are those of us who deal with mental health issues, which come in so many different forms, there is a stigma attached to you that you are weak. A common phrase I have heard in my years of struggling with depression and anxiety is that everyone deals with being depressed from time to time. (This is not something that I deny. To pretend I’m the only one who can have a bad day would be asinine, but there is a severe disconnect in the understanding of the difference between situational depression, and someone who is clinically depressed.)

If I’m not having that thrown in my face, its people questioning (almost always behind my back) why I am depressed in the first place, which essentially always hints at that person not deeming my life’s circumstances worthy of such mental anguish. (I could seriously go down a rabbit trail here, but I digress, before this entry ends up ten pages long.)

            Then there are those of us who are living in a reality where our daily lives are impacted by our brain, which in the case of Cerebral Palsy, manifests itself in many, many ways. In the mildest cases (like myself) our gate (or walk) is vastly different than most of the world’s population. Combine that with what almost feels like toddler like steadiness on our feet, and weakness in our limbs along with some mild (to occasionally severe) discomfort and pain, and you’ve summed up most of my physical existence. (I’ll go into more detail about my personal day to day life experiences as time goes on.)

            In comparison, I have memories of sitting in various doctors’ offices as I was growing up and seeing people who were so badly impacted by this disability that it had robbed them of something that I would venture to guess most of us take for granted, and that is basic motor and communicative skills. I have witnessed individuals so badly drawn up in their muscles that they were unable to extend their fingers, much less their entire arm. I’ve watched as those people attempted to communicate with their loved ones, and I could only hope that those loved ones understood them, because I certainly couldn’t. I have witnessed those same people have their dignity stripped away just a little every time someone had to wipe their face because they are unable to control something as simple as their own saliva.

            The cases I mentioned above are probably the most severe ones (or at least the most severe cases that I have witnessed in my lifetime.) The point I am attempting to make, is that the CP experience is not the same for every individual. The symptoms aren’t all the same, nor is the way they developed the condition. The latter is one of those things that I have been ignorant to due to sheer carelessness on my part. I’m going to keep it simple here, for two reasons, 1. I have much more to learn, and any attempt to get too technical here would be for no other reason than to inflate my own ego by making you, the reader, think I am more intelligent than I am. 2. If you wanted to read a medical journal, you wouldn’t be on some guy’s blog. With those two things in mind, here is my explanation, and understanding thus far; for a person to develop Cerebral Palsy, one of two things takes place, either it is a situation like my birth, where what I can only call a freak accident, at this point in time, took place, causing damage to my brain and thus forming the CP. Then there are the situations where no trauma took place, but something went wrong during the pregnancy and hindered the development of the brain.

            I always knew that there were much worse cases of Cerebral Palsy than I could ever even begin to comprehend. I knew that I have been, and am blessed to have the mobility and quality of life that I have had in the face of CP. In fact, if you want to get right down to it, compared to what so many others must deal with daily, it’s almost fairer to say that my experience has been more of a mild inconvenience than anything else, but, prior to starting this blog, I sincerely believed that all Cerebral Palsy stemmed from some of trauma to the brain. That’s where the ‘miseducation’ part of my blog comes into play, but now that I think about it, ‘The Ignorance of Bradley Blake’ would probably be a more fitting title, because I didn’t exactly try to educate myself these past 37 years.

            Okay, so I believe I’ve laid some adequate building blocks, and now I can get to the heart of this entry. I want each of you to stop for a second and think of that friend or family member who is depressed (okay, so this is a shot in the dark, but let’s call it educated, shall we…I feel the odds are in my favor here.) Have you got them in your mind? Can you picture their face? If you can’t see them clearly in your minds eye, take just a moment, close your eyes, and get a clear mental image of that person you love dearly, who suffers with depression. Got it? Okay, good…now, imagine that person you have in your mind not only dealing with a daily mental battle to simply exist, but also facing the physical and mental challenges that come with Cerebral Palsy. Talk about being behind the eight-ball, or if football is more your flavor, you just took two ten-yard penalties, and you only have thirty seconds left in regulation.

    According to FlintRehab.com men with Cerebral Palsy are more likely to develop mental health disorders than men without Cerebral Palsy. Here are the stats they published:

• Schizophrenic Disorders (2.8% to 0.7%)
• Mood Affective Disorders (19.5 % to 8.1%)
• Anxiety Disorders (19.5% to 11.1%)
• Personality and Behavior Disorders (1.2% to 0.3%)
• Opioid- and Alcohol-Related Disorders (4.7% to 3.0%)

In comparison, women who have Cerebral Palsy came in higher than women without Cerebral Palsy in all those same categories, aside from Opioid and Alcohol Related Disorders.

Sheesh, we got deep there for a minute, didn’t we? I shared all that information to say this, I am one of those men who developed mental health disorders in the form of anxiety and depression. I believe it is a fair statement, to say that one of the most agonizing aspects of depression, is not understanding why you’re depressed. In the start of this post, I called myself an enigma, well depression, that’s an enigma all its own. I believe that if you’re able to pinpoint the why, then you’ve already won half the battle.

I will sum this entry up by saying this, last night I realized that I have two choices in the face of depression, I can either become another statistic in the suicide column, or I can fight like I’m Rocky Balboa in the final round with Apollo Creed, and do it while being an advocate for two communities of people who are in desperate need of someone to stand up for them...for us.

In case you hadn’t already figured it out…it’s the twelfth round, and I’m throwing haymakers.