Well that’s my high point of the weekend over for another year,”Strictly Come Dancing” is finished, I suppose I do still have the possibility that the new “Dr Who” will be as good as the previous ones, but I have my doubts. I actually managed to stay awake until the end at 9:50 last night but only with the help of a little blue pill, my body wasn’t happy with me at all, it just wanted me to give in and head to bed, even trying to force me there by boosting every pain it could. Before anyone says that I could have just recorded it and gone to bed watching it today, well sorry it just isn’t the same, even when I sat there in pain watching to the end, only for the wrong person to win the glitter ball. I was surprised that I found myself with a hand that I could hardly move due to the pain, it was something I haven’t had for years, not since I gave in and stopped knitting. I remember it being around 1984, I used to knit almost all the time as I could not only knit Arran, I also knitted Fair Isle and with two children and a husband to kit out every year with new jumpers I would spend a couple of months each year knitting in any spare time I had, even when I was doing other things, I knitted without a pattern other than the one I had in my head. I went to the doctors as my hands had suddenly become so painful that not only the knitting was off, so was almost everything else, he took one look at my hands and with my description he declared that I had arthritis and gave me anti inflammatory tablets to take. Like so many other things there was no true investigation into it and it disappeared only to reappear several months latter, now like so many other things I guess it was all part of my MS. Both hands have been causing me mild problems for a long time now but last night my left hand went off the scale, I could hardly move it and pain was ridicules, it wasn’t the only part of me that the pain was growing in the longer I stayed up, but it was the worst. This morning once again there is a shadow of the pain still with me, mind you as I said they have become part of me that doesn’t shut up totally, always with a grumble to pass on when ever they can.

I used to love doing all my craft work hobbies and I have tried and tried to work out why I have just accepted I can’t do them any longer without any anger or feeling of lose. Through out my adult life I have spent every free minute sitting knitting, doing embroideries, bead work or tapestry, I always designed my own work pieces and I always worked on them with pride. I saw them as being one of the things that I could do, to prove to the world that I wasn’t as useless as I had been made to feel as a child. I grew up feeling that I had to do everything perfectly as it somehow nibbled away at the fact I was a waste of space and totally useless, words that I heard from both of my parents at different time. By my mid twenties I had devoted my time to being the perfect image of a wife, I cooked all styles of food and cooked well, I baked all our bread, cake and biscuits, I made enough wine yearly to float a battle ship and not from kits, but from what ever I could gather in the wild. I made all the children’s cloth and most of mine, kept everything spotless, gardened and foraged so I could cook and bake even more. I did all the DIY, purchased second hand furniture and stripped painted, rebuilt and changed usage, so that our home was at the highest standard I could achieve. All so that when or if my family could find the time to actually visit us, I might just have been able to undo what they thought of me, but most never bothered to come anywhere near. I actually also loved being able to do all those things and when Adam and I bought our home, for the first time I set out to put together a home that I didn’t care if no one saw it, it was ours and I could be proud of it. So how come I can now sit here doing not one of those things, not being able to, but actually accepting those facts without any feeling of anger or grief, that all of it has gone.

I have asked myself that very question time and time again, why am I not bitter that my body is falling to bits and my life has on one hand been stolen and on the other shortened dramatically. Why am I not depressed by not being able to go camping or walking or even to walk to the pub. Surly I should be filled with anger that I am the one who has to live with pain all the time, that my brain has let me down in ways I never though it could, and yet I accept every bit of it without any grief, any anger or any bitterness at all. I know others question it to, but just as I can’t give myself the final answer, I can’t answer others either. The only thing that I believe that might actually be the answer and might help others to understand, is the fact that I have learned over the years to let go of hate and anger. I was abused both physically and mentally from childhood on, but I have no anger or need for revenge or anything else, I have managed to learn to just let go of it, to forgive those who did it and to accept it is just part of my life. It took me a long time to forgive but I knew I had to or I would have been driven mad by it and it would have eaten more and more of me away. So I taught myself to forgive each of them bit by bit until they could no longer hurt me, so when it came to forgiving a body that wont pick up a bead, or a brain that forgot for the millionth time the name of that guy on TV, or the pain that brings tears to my eyes, or any of the things that illness does to me, well it’s easy. I have already forgiven what for many would be their worst nightmare and for me was my reality. Forgiving my body and the illnesses it plays host to, well trust me it is easy, so easy that I didn’t have to think about it, it was just an action that I did through instinct rather than design. I guess that is the way I handle it, if you forgive something or someone who is your worst horrific reality, then you have destroyed their power and they then can’t be in control of you any more. It doesn’t change the reality of my life but it changes the reality of my happiness and ability to enjoy what I have.