The truth about Cinderella
Some days I go through life like a half-baked version of Cinderella. There’s promise at 8 AM, but by 11 AM my fairytale book is closed until further notice. In the background, that all-important clock keeps ticking forward, but my body is in a rut: sleeping, eating, exercising, resting, more eating, more sleeping and back again. And that Cinderella shoe? Taken by someone else altogether. Very much like the 11 AM dip in your energy levels, mine resembles a psychologically broken record: I keep finding out I am 100% present, but physically I’m not all there.
Mental or physical, your choice
"Is life with MS that comfortable, then? God, no. Absolutely not. You just have to learn how to live with it. Somehow I found a way to tap goodness from those negative connotations because I listened to its actual narrative by refusing to make a mountain out of a molehill. So, even when facial pain is also called “the suicide disease”, even when MS fatigue can knock me senseless in less than five minutes, and even when I feel awful inside despite not looking sick, I am just cool with the whole lot because there simply is no other way."
How (not to) be sick!
That's me. I forget how to be sick. The fact that physically I am crumbling under a lot of neuropathic pain, can’t frown my forehead into cute wrinkles, have no feeling on the top of my scalp, have constant bees in my ears of tinnitus, stabbing facial pain and intense fatigue, is something I refuse to show anyone carrying a medical degree. It’s a survival instinct of sorts.
Are you Cinderella yet?
"Seeing the world with fresh eyes every morning is something other people do. I try to get my innate sense of curiosity and wonder going when I wake up, but my enthusiasm only reaches as far as, “Oh look, both my eyes are open!” I re-evaluated my night-time activities, so, as those dubious sleep and pretend-to-be-awake-games only lead to more excessive MS fatigue."
Silence! (or how to break me using sounds)
"So yes, we all have a bit of that sh*t-life-syndrome every so often. Sadly, we cannot unlearn our illness or symptoms like we can unlearn unwanted behaviours. What a drastic symptom like this does teach us, though, is how we can best create a workaround that should lessen its impact on us."
I’m an ex and I’m lovin’ it!
"I used to be a lot of things. Busy. Book addict. Ireland lover. Passionate. College student… and perhaps a tad crazy also. But then friends started saying that I was “slowly turning into a blonde”. Physical discrimination on the basis of hair colour aside, I felt they had a point. Concentration skills went from hero to zero. Walking from the couch to the fridge a massive undertaking. In tears in front of the staircase after work because I had to sleep for an hour before being able to scale its height."
The miseducation of…
"Ergo, the benefits of having MS is that I met my other, weaker self, and I learned how to be strong and wise before my own eyes, and at the speed of light. Even E.T. couldn’t follow me on his BMX bike. He tried, the little fella, but lost my phone number. Go figure."
