I feel that bit more under control today, not as lost and as though I am grasping at anything in my mind to keep me in line and still moving. It’s mad how something you knew but didn’t want to hear, can really through you into the worst of muddles and make you just want to stop the world in its tracks for a while. I would even go as far as to say that my determination not to be beaten, is returning, not in the angry out of control style it has been in the last few days, but in a settled and steady fashion. It always seems to take me time to pull myself round and to move again after I have been smashed into pieces like this, I know right now I am just at the beginning of that reconstruction, but it’s moving in the right direction. It is something that I recognise happening from my late 20 onward. As a child and as a young adult, I just brushed myself down and went on again, but I can actually put my finger on the exact day that it changed and the event, as it took me ages to say I had recovered from it, but in some ways, I never recovered at all.

I was working at the time in a hotel bar and it was a really busy night as we had all three bars open as there was a function taking place and I was back and forwards all evening jumping in to serve where I was needed the most. I was in the public bar about to go back through to the lounge when suddenly I was flung up against a wall and someone’s hand was around my throat. There was this incredibly angry man I had never seen before pinning me there and screaming that I had been ignoring him, both in the function bar and in the Public, one of the other staff pulled him back. Despite the fact I had experienced violence throughout my life, this one got to me for several reasons, firstly because it was a total stranger, secondly because I knew I didn’t deserve even his anger as I hadn’t seen him at all that night and finally, because I was totally unjustifiably disciplined by the Brewery, as it turned out he was a friend of the regional manager. These days I would have called the police and had him not just removed from the premises, but also charged with assault. The effect of the whole event left a scar, one that never healed and has meant that I now question constantly my own reactions to things and to examine everything to the finest detail, I even start doing it when there is no reason to, just in case one appears later, but worse than that, it left me feeling like a victim of circumstance. I didn’t feel like a victim because someone attacked me, but I was a victim of everything that followed it, in just the same way I don’t feel myself to be a victim of MS, but I frequently feel like a victim of the things that it causes, like not being able to care for myself totally.

It’s seems, really nuts that one small event can change you so much as a person, before that I just moved on and I continued with whatever the rest of the day, week or month had to offer, not even looking back, but that one occasion, that one event changed me totally. It doesn’t matter how hard I have tried to undo it and to not react this way, I have failed every time. So many years on, I doubt I will now ever change it, but I wish that I could at least take control of it, especially when I can totally see and understand how it started, it actually makes it even more annoying that I just can’t totally shake it off and just get on with life. Mind you if I did, well this might not be worth reading as I totally question life and it’s effect throughout my blog and so many have told me that it is my thoughtful and thought provoking way of writing that they like. I still wish that I could tone it down in my life, especially when the effect is that I now punish or makes things more difficult for myself, yet I suppose that we are all our own harshest critics, but not normally torturer as well.

For the first time in over a year, I decided last night rather than taking the cushion from my chair here at my PC over to the settee with me, that I would just try sitting on the settee as it is. I started taking it with me because I was suffering big style with a painful backside and usually sat here on two cushions, the one from my wheelchair, plus a blow up one as well. You would expect that the settee wouldn’t be a problem but it was and despite it now been several months since I was last unable to sit just out of pain, I just kept taking it with me out of fear that I might trigger it all over again. The last few nights though I have found myself getting a painful neck while watching the TV, I expect you, just like Adam can’t see the link between a cushion and my neck, but there is one. I often sit forward, leaning on my knees, but I then have to tilt my head back to put it in line with the TV, the higher the surface I am sitting on, the more the tilt and pressure on my neck. I sat there for two hours last night as I always do and without any pain in my neck, so the test is now on, how long can I sit there both a pain-free neck and backside, which will complain first?

My arms and legs are once more turning to lead at the slightest excuse, it is already one of those days where I just have to keep stopping to let them rest but have to be careful that I don’t stop too long as if I do, they start to threaten me that they won’t start moving again. I also really didn’t want to get up, the desire to just roll over and sleep again was huge, but as I know not a good idea, not just for me but if I didn’t get up, I know without the slightest doubt it would result in a panicked Adam, convinced that I had somehow died during the night. I know he has several times come home and found me in bed asleep, but was to scared to enter the room just in case he found me dead, he stands in the hallways listening and waiting to hear me make some kind of noise before coming in to wake me. I wish I knew what he thinks is going to happen to me, it isn’t as though he has had reason to worry and if he thought about it logically, if he was going to find me dead somewhere, bed is the least likely place. I am far more likely to fall and kill myself than any other possibility, as I have once managed to knock myself out for several hours, still my worst fall ever, but he panics enough, so getting up is one simple thing I can do to keep him happy. He is of course once more asleep, well that is what Sunday mornings are for in Adams world and I have never succeeded in convincing otherwise,

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today 06/07/12 – Disabled Different?

John went back to the US last night, I think it was a very long day for all of us as we all felt helpless. Teressa is devastated, something that is clear by her pleas to her friends across the world on Facebook. Due to her traveling life, she has gained a strength and ability to cope, with long distance friendships which right now I am glad off. I normally just read her Facebook as I see it as a link but one that in normal times she doesn’t need her mother getting involved in, but I felt a need…..