Adam went on a cleaning spree yesterday so I am happily looking round as much improved view. I have collected a rather large amount of crystal over the last few years. I don’t ever remember not loving Crystal, as a child my parents didn’t have a huge collection, but the had beautiful glasses of all types and a few bowls for deserts, I remember also a set of Grapefruit bowels for some reason. The Crystal was never really on display and only came out for use on special occasions or when they were having a dinner party. In my mind this then placed crystal as a special substance to be handled not just carefully but as seldom as possible.

It must be about 8 yrs ago I discovered that crystal was ridiculously cheap on Ebay and to be honest I knew it was then, and probably now, out of fashion. So I started collecting, I would say that I bought 2 or 3 items each month, but when I found that I could buy what in a shop would cost several hundred pounds for between £10 and £20, I was in my element. Unlike my Mother my crystal is not hidden it is all out on display, my collection just kept growing. If I was still working I have no doubt that I would still be buying. My Crystal to me is like life, it has beauty and sparkle and kept clean it seems to live in it’s own way, when the sun enters any room, then the real magic begins.

My crystal is of no real importance to anyone else but me, no one else sees it the way I do, or gets the pleasure I do from simply picking up a glass and running my fingers over the design. There are items I am sure in your home that gives you that same pleasure, things that the world outside would glance at or ignore, but to you mean everything. I may have gone a little further than most in the quantities I have bought, but I now see that I bought it as a tool to compensate for everything else I was loosing. The bulk of my crystal arrived after I hit the point that I needed a wheelchair. I bought more and more to replace in the world I was loosing. I also found that what I spent on other people also increased, I wanted to give my love in items, as I couldn’t show in any other way. I was wildly compensating, because the arrival of the wheelchair was the point that I knew was the final sign, the sign that I was disabled and not the person they or I once knew.

The impact on my life at the point was huge, it changed everything. Looking back I see so many thing that were signs that although I used bravado to cover, that I wasn’t dealing that well with the impact on me, at all. I suppose that I did what many do, the transferring of emotion into money. I was luck, I had a good job and I was a great with budgets and a clever finder of bargains, so I could manage the financial impact, dealing with numbers was easier than dealing with life. I wasn’t any stronger than others in my position, I wasn’t any better at adjusting, I was simply better at covering up. If I am to be brutally honest it was hellishly difficult to accept. I was angry at me, at my MS and at a lot of people who I had no right to be angry with. Adjustment takes time and in my case money, but I did adjust and I did eventually realise, I was still the same person, all that had changed was I could get around faster than anyone else.