What Lives Hidden Beneath

I'd like to wish you a Happy Rare Disease day. Why Happy? Diseases are terrible right? In my less than humble opinion, the answer is, "well...not necessarily." As I talked about last week, one's life experience, including health and other challenges shape one as a person to varying degrees. It is my unusual physical situation that contributed to my humor and overall approach to story telling. McCune Albright Syndrome and Fibrous Dysplasia have their difficult moments, but have also blessed me and others in countless valuable ways. Today, is about celebrating what makes us different and uniquely strong, while acknowledging our individual gifts and challenges, regardless of what those may be for you.

In much of my work thus far, I've used my own health to shape some of my characters. I feel that doing so is another way of adding personality and depth to the people in my stories. Most tales contain archetype characters, such as the arrogant jerk, the misunderstood loner, the individual with simmering anger issues, the fragile yet beautiful maiden etc. I personally like to throw in someone with a disability. To me this challenges my skill as a writer to portray a character's disabilities clearly and strongly so as to give you, my charming reader a more thought provoking and interesting person and situation about which to read.

I'm in the midst of outlining a second novel whose main character has McCune Albright Syndrome. To this point, my disabled characters have possessed physical issues that are noticeable to the other individuals in the story. My challenge here though, is to portray the main character's condition as an invisible disability. So many people have illnesses or physical issues that are not visually apparent, yet still present them with significant hurtles in their daily lives. I'm sure you, or someone you know has seen someone using a handicap parking spot who appeared to be perfectly normal, if I may be so trite. I request that you take a minute to consider in such situations, the person you are observing may have some sort of physical issue that is serious and impacts their world, but that may be difficult to notice, especially at a distance.

An example from my own life is the appearance of my eyes. Now, I am totally blind, but my eyes are fairly normal looking. Yet, I cannot count the number of people who found it difficult to believe I do not have vision as my eyes are quite normal. I've even encountered people when I used to do presentations on blindness, who were amazed I was blind because I still had eyes at all. My point here is there are many myths and stigmas about all sorts of disabilities and health issues, and looking unusual in someway is not the defining factor for a lot of them. Many of them are hidden beneath the surface.

Now, the reason I'm making a point about this, is my other physical issues and disability are easily noticeable to your naked eye, or your foot if you've been so lucky to be a victim of my walker's wheel. Invisible health issues and disabilities were something I myself hadn't thought a lot about for most of my life. It was a bit of a shock when I considered that there were people out there, with significant disabilities that did not stand out in a crowd due to an altered or unusual appearance, so even I was somewhat a believer in the common stereotype of disabilities being visually apparent.

Characters in stories should have weaknesses, flaws or some other quality or aspect that makes them relatable. That engages you the reader much more and simply just makes an interestingly entertaining tale. Depth in both character and story to me are imperative in my work, and I like to fill both with details and wit that may or may not be obvious. As I am regularly involved in disabled communities, it just feels natural to me to use physical issues and struggles in my work to create those extra dimensions, hence the above written, invisible condition monolog.

I've recently, as part of outlining this second novel, begun picking the brains of my compatriots in the Fibrous Dysplasia community. I would like to extend to you the invitation to share with me any experience you have had with a nonvisual disability or illness. Both sides of the coin to me are most interesting, so if you have known someone with an invisible health issue, or have one yourself, I'd love to hear from you on my Facebook page, Facebook.com/writerjonathanbirdsall either via post or private message. I may even fire a free copy of the above mentioned book your way when completed, for sharing your experiences with me.

A fitting quote to me, by poet Hughes Mearns:

"Last night I saw upon the stair,
A little man who wasn't there,"

"Antigonish, Hughes Mearns, 1899"

See you next week.