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A vague picture of myself six years ago floats into my mind. I’m sitting at a desk similar to this one. The window above the desk looks out onto my parents’ backyard, where the me of that time has a thriving garden of vegetables and herbs. I’m scribbling a poem into one of my many notebooks. I chew on the end of the pencil when the right word escapes me.
I examine this setting in contrast to where I am now. A similar desk, with many of the same notebooks, now stored on the shelf below. My window looks out into the grass of an apartment complex. The only herb I currently have is basil, but my houseplants thrive nonetheless, some of them growing beyond the space I’ve given them. Isopods and mealworms rest in the living room. Guinea pigs skitter around behind me.
Chewing on writing utensils is still a thinking aid for me, only now it’s pens. I only use pencils for drawing.
Currently, I’m not scribbling a poem in a notebook. I’m filling out yet more paperwork, by hand, for a disability application. I’ve spent my morning in my new routine, writing for money and taking movement breaks. I haven’t had any significant contact with my parents in more than a year and a half.
That version of me six years ago would find all of this, frankly, preposterous. So my thoughts drift away from the inane form questions and into the currents of time. How did I end up here?
Quests, to many, are an element of fantasy. A grand adventure across the land, fighting perilous foes, in search of an unimaginable treasure. Or, in search of getting your shell back from a stingy crab after it was stolen by a loan shark.
A quest is but a journey with a purpose. It does not need to be restricted to the realms of fantasy or fiction. It doesn’t have to be a physical quest, although many of them are, even the ones you wouldn’t expect.
It’s easy for me to point out the concrete moments of transition that got me here. The logistics and decisions that led to the general circumstance of my current life. Moves and diagnoses and relationships. A chess game easily replayed. But what led to my emotional certainties, my self-acceptances, my lifestyle adaptations?
No matter how much I think, that is a much harder answer to give.
This season of The Disabled Witch will be a quest to find an answer to that question. A cataloging of my own journey through the realms of disability, embodiment, and acceptance. It will inevitably be peppered with holes and lost facts. Memory follows the same route as leaves on the forest floor, decaying with the passing of the clock.
I find no place more comfortable than the woods. Far enough from roads to lose the grating cloud of engines, horns, tires, and brakes.
I stand at the transition from grass to trees, this sacred boundary that has always drawn me in. My weight rests on my left leg, supported with a cane in my left hand.
A dragonfly zips by, heading on its own quest into the trees. Squirrels skitter invisibly through the dense grasses and ground cover. Above my head, a bird’s wings beat in time with my heart.
All it will take is one step. And then another, another, another. Over and over until the hazy destination is reached, or until my soul feels satisfied with the journey.
Breath fills my lungs. Soft, gentle forest air. In tandem, I lift my right foot and left hand. Cane and heel come down together on the dirt and leaves.
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Ashton Rose 