The unpredictability of MS is one of the
hardest things about it. In good days, I feel like I can do anything. I’ve
grown a lime tree, a fynbos garden, and a beautiful boy child. I made my first
movie and am finishing my first novel.
I’ve also been hospitalized twice. Once
because I was numb from the neck down. I now know that massive doses of
corticosteroids make me mean and manic, and that I can compensate for
proprioception – the inability to feel where you are in space – by focusing on
a point in front of me to keep my balance. Which only works when the balance
itself hasn’t gone haywire; the first time I was hospitalized my internal
gyroscope was intent on tilting the world to my right. Or me to the left. Walls
were my friends then, because they, at least, stayed in one place.
Still, I’m in awe of the way my body works,
even when it doesn’t. Perhaps especially then, because I stop taking it for
granted and marvel when it slowly, steadily, finds other ways to get the
signals through from nerves to brain and vice versa.
I believe our bodies have the most amazing
ability to heal themselves, if we give them the right conditions to do so. In
that spirit of awe and respect, my top three no-brainers:
No-brainer 1: You are not in control
The
Serenity Prayer is routinely used by AA
Most of us suffer under the delusion that
we can control everything, or at the very least, ourselves.
But there’s a good reason why the Serenity
Prayer is routinely used by AA and other addiction recovery programmes: “Grant
me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the
things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference…”
My addiction used to be “doing”. I
squandered energy, pushed myself too hard, burnt out and relit the candles,
ignored the warning sighs. Eventually my body made me stop, and acknowledge
that the thing I was avoiding all along was my own vulnerability.
No-brainer 2: You are not to blame
The best thing about relinquishing control
is that you don’t have to take responsibility for everything that happens to
you. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t do your utmost to take good care of
yourself.
But if you wake up and you can’t stand up,
it’s not because you didn’t think enough positive thoughts or put another
carrot in the juicer. It’s because, sometimes, sh*t just happens.
Once you accept this, you know that giving
in is not the same thing as giving up.
No-brainer 3: Find your joy spot
Website:
msif.org
Let me be quite clear: I’m not in any way
grateful for this syndrome. Feeling betrayed by your own body is a difficult
one. I want to fix the problem, but I am the problem. That still makes me angry
and incredibly frustrated.
It also makes me human. It can be hard to
connect with joy when you’ve had an existential carpet pulled out from under
you. But it’s not only possible, it’s necessary. For me, “healing/dealing” with
MS is about remembering how intensely life wants to LIVE.
I find my joy spot most purely in natural
spaces. Walking my dogs in fynbos makes me deliriously happy. So does jumping
into the icy Atlantic on a sweltering February day. And so does the occasional
slice of key lime pie.
