Defined by myself
"As you can tell, I have lots that strengthens me and drives me forward. I also have (dis)abilities: severe bouts of pain and fatigue, which I bent into a positive writing tool for others to lean on. My limitations serve as other people’s motivation. Their motivation became my inspiration."
11 years!
There aren’t many things in my life that have outnumbered my years in Ireland as I celebrate my 11th anniversary of living in Ireland today. Once again I had to pinch my arm, making sure that I woke up in Clonsilla, Ireland instead of Belgium. Eleven years indeed. Dreams do come true if you want it badly, if you work at it and if you don’t lose focus. Eleven years. Eleven. Eleven. Yes, Billie, eleven! Love for family and friends obviously outnumbered all the years living in Ireland. Likewise for pets come and gone, as well as my addiction to books, libraries, history and all things Irish.
I’m a writer!
When can you call yourself a writer? With that debate still unsolved, I continue to wonder if I can call myself so. After all, I am now a former Incident Coordinator, a former library assistant and therefore a former ‘employed being’ altogether. And that sounds rather bad for one’s ego when pondered upon too long. Asked by people what on earth I now fill my days with when I’m forced to dedicate most of my days to rest and sleep, I simply tell them “I write.” Instantly eyebrows raise higher than one’s crown chakra and a slight shaking of the head indicates the dismay – envy perhaps? – and inner thoughts that spell “this girl has lost it for good.”
Contrary!
“You’re just being contrary!” my mum used to say. I think that from a young age, she must have found me indeed, a bit different than other kids my age. I wasn’t rebellious, in fact as a teen I was anything but rebellious, but you might say that I went through the usual girly teen behaviour so many of us poor women went through. I fell in and out of love with pop stars, loved singing and dancing and enjoyed an outdoor lifestyle with many of my friends. Perhaps my generation was the last one to grow up without mobile phones, without game consoles to play bowling without the actual ball and tennis without being on a tennis court.
My tired is tired
Yep… right now I am one hell of a great example of how MS can just snap you right back to when you were first diagnosed, hence the large picture stating that very fact. Remember the days where you were just bed-ridden with lots of symptoms not making sense, and pain that kept you up day and night, no matter how tired you were? How so? Well, last week my body was half-fried under the sun in temperatures of 35°C. Microwave temperatures sizzling my body from the outside in, although it felt like I was roasted from the inside out. I still feel like a walking advert for Kentucky Fried Chicken… minus the Kentucky mind you. And the chicken.
Vertigo: not just a U2 song
“How do I find my way back to my desk?!” With that, vertigo had entered my life in 2005 while I was at work. The hallway seemed to be spinning. Or was it me? Had I finally lost my mind altogether? A tilting floor wanted to meet my knees instead of my feet. “Ground control to Major Tom? Can anyone save me?” Afraid of moving any further because I felt like I would fall on the ground nose first. “Well hello there,” answered Major Tom, “I’m Vertigo, your newest symptom!” Vertigo as in U2’s Vertigo had absolutely no business with MS-vertigo. Please don’t confuse it with the Hollywood-version of acrophobia, either, the latter being an extreme fear of heights.
Why Ireland?
People often ask me: “Why Ireland?” And tongue-in-cheek, I think, “Do you have a day or two so I can explain?” It goes back years, if not decades. I remember as a kid in the library under our apartment, how I traveled through Ireland by sitting down and watching pictures in big books on Ireland. I could not imagine that the Ireland in the travel guides was the same island of Ireland we used to see on TV at night, where people were killed in bomb attacks and house fires in the north, where people were executed for their religion, their beliefs. Of course, the news reports were about Northern Ireland. Somehow I was attracted to the underdog, and in my eyes Ireland was that underdog. I’ve always had a…