Who Are You?

"Your Identity Is Your Most Valuable Possession, Protect It"


It's been a crap few months, infection after infection, antibiotics that make one feel worse before they make one feel better, and trying to find a level of my MS meds that suit and work and don't make me worse has been rather crappy to say the least. Added to that my liver issues and gall bladder issues and family issues and work issues and you're halfway there. Yeah there's lots of people out there fighting battles and I'm sure they're worse than any I'm fighting, but when life becomes one long round of being ill, taking meds, being more ill, worrying if you go out for a walk on your own will you be ok, wanting to go places but not being able to due to being ill, it's difficult to see the light. I have felt like I was drowning in it all, like I was in way over my head and lost.

It's a very draining feeling, that lost feeling. I've felt it lots of times before due to depression and fighting cancer. Lost in the way of not knowing where to go or what to do next but more importantly lost as in losing oneself. Questioning who you are, what have you become, and how has this changed you. You begin to worry and feel anxious about how others view you now, how they see you, how they react to you being ill.

I've never been one for caring for what other people thought of me. Since being ill I take advantage of the good days and get up and get out. I've always one for putting on my make up, painting on a smile, and saying screw you I'm getting on with things.  It's difficult though, when your head says do it and your body says no. On many occasions I've gone ahead anyway and had to deal with the consequences. Being judged for using disabled facilities while looking perfectly healthy on the outside being one of those consequences. I've been frequently accused of being drunk due to slurring of words and inability to string a sentence together, or not being able to put one foot in front of the other. " She's drunk, she's too lazy to climb the stairs, she's pissed off her face, she's got withdrawals and she's shaking", have all been repeatedly said to me and very often in a far more abusive way. The irony of it all is that I rarely drink alcohol these days. I drink pints.... of lemonade. And for some reason I'm so embarrassed and caught unawares that I can't answer back no matter how hard I try. This has led to me dreading going anywhere with my family for fear of being judged. Wrong on every level and now that I've realised this, I can hopefully do something about it. My daughter has stood up for me on a few occasions, telling these people off, which is brilliant, but at the same time it makes me feel guilty because I'm the mum. It's my job to stand up and protect her. Not the other way around. No matter how old your children get, they're still your children and those mother hen feelings never go away.

So I began to think that this was going to be my life from now on. The constant hamster on the wheel of stress and illness. This is it, this is my life. No more happy times, no more days out, no more enjoyment, no more job, just illness, pain, frustration and being stuck in that one place while everything fell apart around me. While all I can do is watch it crumble and fall apart, and feel overwhelmed and drowning in it all. Then the severe anxiety steps in and adds to the stress, and stress triggers off my episodes and well so it goes. I began to feel unworthy of people's love, unable to see why they would care and want to help and blaming myself for being ill. If anyone else that I was close to was going through this, I would hug them and hold them and support them and help them, yet I find it so hard to do it for myself, never mind letting anyone else do it.

One of the bad things about being ill and having to rest is you have time to think. It's also one of the good things. It has helped me to work lots of things out in my head. I think my biggest worry is that somehow I've lost who I am. That I will just become "that MS girl". To the point where whenever someone tries to talk about treatment I refuse to even think about it, or acknowledge it, and even just ignored it and brushed it off. Thing is, it's not going away. It's there. And it has to be dealt with.  But, and it's a big but, it's a part of me, it's not the sum of my being. It's not what I am. I am still me. I'm still sassy, still funny, still intelligent, still hard working, still a mum, still a friend, still a perfectly capable woman. I have an illness, the illness is not me. I need to try to get back in touch with all of that, to get back my no shit attitude, to show my strength and realise that nothing I've done has led to this illness, it's one of those things that life throws at us. It's a curve ball, but not the end of the world. Changes will have to be made, but it doesn't have to change me as a person. I am who I am, and nothing I've dealt with so far has changed that. And I plan on keeping it that way.

SharonAnn x