June the first, another month has vanished somewhere I am not sure how it still amazes me how fast time can pass when you are doing nothing. I remember as a child the feeling that an hour could be an eternity and a year well the whole concept was too alien to be able to really grasp at all, yet here I am like my mother said I would be, losing years faster than I once thought an hour truly was. Growing up changes so much that I doubt anyone could really sit and write a true account of all those feelings and steps that to me have been long forgotten. There are odd ones, ones attached to strong memories, or stories I have been told, but that is all they are now, stories of a past that to me is distant but in the true scale of things, just a second ago. There is without a doubt, one thing that always seems to go on forever and those are the nights when regardless of being exhausted, you just don’t really sleep, those nights feel as though they go on forever. It doesn’t happen often to me, sleep is one thing that I find easy, but when it does, when I can remember watching the clock change throughout the night, well I always remember what time it was when I last looked.

Years ago I would have just given up on sleep, I would have got out of bed, got dressed and started my day at what ever time it was, even as early as 1 am just a couple of hours after I had gone to bed, I started and continued with no more sleep the whole of my day. Now, well that just can’t happen, I wouldn’t survive it in the same way at all, these days I now just lie there not moving at all and trying to blank my mind enough for a few more minutes of that much-needed sleep. Two points in my life that are total opposites, I now actually believe that I could go to bed and lie there without truly sleeping and without moving for the whole 11hrs and it wouldn’t bother me, or frustrate me at all, I have learned somehow the importance of true rest. I used to think that resting was a case of sitting down watching TV, or reading a book, but it isn’t. Rest is when your body disconnects from your mind when slowly your body doesn’t feel as though it is even there. Your mind no longer knows where your hands are, but if you ask it, it will invent a position, just to shut you up then continues to drift and run where ever it wants, without any permission of any kind what so ever. It has taken me more than half a lifetime to work out what rest is and how to manage it, I just wish someone much sooner had taken me to one side and explained it to me, as clearly I didn’t understand it at all.

We all assume that everyone is the same as us, that we all do the same basic things and we all understand what to do when and how to do it, we don’t! I wish that as part of my education someone had taken the time to teach me how and explain why, to a million and one things that I seem to have learned too late. Relaxing and resting are just an example of things no one teaches us how to do, no one bothers to explain it’s importance or how it can actually help us. We all just wonder around believing we have got it right until suddenly we find out, that for our entire lives it was wrong. I used to jokingly say that “I wished life came with a handbook, but the only problem with that idea would be it would take a lifetime to read it”. I may have once said it jokingly, but it was more true than I ever realised as we all write our own one and we never stop writing it, as we never stop learning it. I know I am not alone when it comes to the amazing fact about life that have only become clear to me now that I am ill, I have talked to many people who like me, wish they could teach others just how easy it is to be happy and just how unimportant so many of the things we used to value really are. I guess I am doing my bit, I write this daily, but I guarantee that the people who need it most, will be too busy to read or learn anything from it, I know I would have been.

I guess that is why I wish it had been part of my education, as those years we are at school is the only time in our lives where we are made to learn, they have us there captive unable to ignore totally what they are saying, so life skills, well they would have done me more good than some of the things I was forced to learn, like Latin. Seriously, though, teaching a child how to value time, life, happiness and relaxation may sound like the things our parents should teach us, but not all do, mine taught me how to work 24/7 and guess what I did, just what they taught me. I was taught that those who didn’t work, who weren’t active constantly, were wastrels, with no counter balance ever shown to me. As life piles in on you and you try to crush in more and more, you totally loose sight of the truth of what life is about and the sad thing is most others out there will only learn it once either their health or their age stops them from being part of it anymore. I doubt if the perfect answer actually exists, as once you have learned the value of a quiet life, you are not out there any longer to teach anyone else, another one of those puzzles there isn’t an answer to.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 01/06/12 – Faith in your carers

I sat and read through a rather long article on the possibility that MS doesn’t actually exist and that it along with some other illnesses were all caused by the Borrelia bacteria, the same bacteria as causes Lyme. I never take one article as meaning anything and I always cross reference with others freely available on the web. The original article implied there was a worldwide conspiracy……