Ireland
Your feet will bring you where your heart is (Irish proverb) © Willeke Van Eeckhoutte and Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me, 2011-2012. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Willeke Van Eeckhoutte and Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Reality check!
I just saw this picture on a dedicated MS Facebook page. It says “YOU WILL NEVER KNOW WHAT PAIN IS UNLESS YOU HAVE MS!!” Well excusez–moi, please, but that is just OTT. Life is NOT A CONTEST of who has more pain than the other, it’s not a game of showing people how sick we can be. So forgive me for sticking up for others who are otherwise seriously ill, because statements like this only give people the wrong idea of what having MS is really like.
W.B. Yeats, the collected poems
“You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon; Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace; think where man’s glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends.” (William Butler Yeats) © Willeke Van Eeckhoutte and Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me, 2011-2012.
Letting go
Life seems like a joke, out to get you when you least expect it. People disappear from your life, but it’s not until after they’re gone that you realise how much you liked being around them. Or, you understand what being truly happy means because you’ve known absolute sadness. Or you start appreciating silence because you know how loud, annoying and horrible noise can be. Life seems like a joke so; it makes you learn lessons by applying the opposite of what you want. Life is a joke in an ironic way. Murphy’s Law had it in for me years ago. Anything that could go wrong went totally wrong. In the space of 3.5 years I lost part of myself (thank you MS!), and my only sibling, stepdad and four other…
The big Irish divide
Last month I finally visited Shankill and Falls Road after taking time out to see “the other part” of Ireland: Belfast in Northern Ireland. I’ve been living on this green island for 10 years now and had been in Belfast on shopping trips before, but had never seen the inner city and the famous Shankill and Falls Road areas. Somehow I felt like I knew a lot about its history already; that this knowledge shaped my idea about the centuries old divide… that was until I saw the areas affected by it. ‘Loyalist‘ or ‘Unionist‘ (those who prefer to stay under the British flag) and ‘Nationalist‘ or ‘Republican‘ (those that want an independent and united Ireland, where Northern Ireland is returned to Ireland) weren’t just words anymore; they became areas,…
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.
Old Library, Trinity College
© Willeke Van Eeckhoutte and Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me, 2011-2012. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Willeke Van Eeckhoutte and Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.