I woke this morning from one of those dreams, you know, the ones you can’t escape. I actually woke several times in the space of twenty minutes, and every time I dosed off again, there it was, that same dream all over again. In my dream, I was lying in my bed, but someone was pushing upwards from below. Not like my mattress elevator does, that forms a fold in the mattress, I was being lifted just as though the whole bed was being tilted. Every time I was close to being spilled out of the bed, I woke. Just for a few seconds, then it did it all over again. At 7:25, I gave up and got up. The whole dream had started with my being aware of what sounded like tiny people running around inside the mattress. I couldn’t hear their voices, I was just aware of them and knew, without a doubt, that that was what they were. I wish someone would explain that one to me, not so much the dream, I’ve never believed that they mean much, but why was I able to wake, and rejoin the dream over and over at the exact same place, just as they started to make the mattress rise.

I used to think that dreams were the most maddening things that I was ever going to have in my life. Even when I was a child, I never dreamt in the middle of the night, only ever when I am about due to wake and they have all been just as stupid. I don’t know what made me decide to write about it. I guess it was a little unsettling, the whole idea of being tipped out of my bed, the one place I have throughout my housebound years has been my sanctuary, just got to me a little. It’s a huge step I know, from not even caring about them to being so unsettled that here I am writing about them, but that is just the way it is. Life seems to take some strange twists once you’re in my position. It is a huge mistake to think that our health is just our health. It plays games with us constantly, it changes our views, not just on personal things, but on those things we once thought we didn’t care about, somehow suddenly they mean the world to us. It’s not surprising really, if you think about it, as there isn’t anything more life changing than what is happening to us right now. We all grew up believing that life was one long adventure, that we would never know what was going to happen next, and here we are, suddenly aware of everything that is going to happen to us today, tomorrow and even next week. The time we get up, the meds we will take, what we will do all day and when we will go back to bed. Everything ruled by my health, laid out, the same and safe. In so many ways, I have gone from living my life, to living my health. If that doesn’t change your views on anything, well, I don’t know what will.

Routine and structure, they are so important to me, but they are the total opposite of an adventure. I used to love that buzz when I was heading off to do something new, or I was going for a long walk in some place I didn’t know. Nothing phased me, I don’t remember as an adult ever being scared by anything. Not even the night that the owner of the nightclub I was DJing for, warned me that there were armed police outside the building, plain clothed ones inside, and on top of that, without the police knowing, they had weapons secreted all around the club. I just did my job. Nothing happened, but I have to admit, it was an adventure. These days an adventure, even the tiniest of ones, like someone turning up here unexplained, freaks me out. Nothing about my life now is unknown, nothing unexpected, not even the spasms and the pain. Yes, some turn up where they don’t normally, but they are still the same, just in a different place. I can’t find a single thing that I can say didn’t happen last week or the one before, not even the food I eat ever changes, as everything has to be the same.

When your own body has turned on you and has you trapped, where you never thought you would be, doing the same things constantly, the one thing you have in abundance, is time. That’s why I said, health changes everything. With so much time, time that I never had before, I have had time to think, to consider, to learn about things, even things that I once didn’t even knew existed. For me, it has been the hidden blessing, the silver lining if you like, that time to think, to learn and to explore the world from my home. Since I have been housebound, I have watched thousands of hours of documentaries, and have even found myself online reading even more about some things. My health has kind of educated me, and it’s taught me about myself as well as the rest of the world. I don’t know what the point has been, other than I discovered I enjoyed it. Discovering that I have a passion for history, especially world war two, really shocked me. Especially as my memory is useless when it comes for dates and names, but it never stopped me in the past and it hasn’t stopped me now. There is one really odd thing, everyone I have spoken to, they have all said the same. No, not that they love world war two, but that they have found something, a new hobby or pass time, something that has opened their lives up, as their health has closed it down. For me, it’s been learning and writing this blog, two things I never did before and two things I now can’t imagine being without now.

Having a chronic illness changes our lives in ways none of us expect and I guess what I am trying to say, is not to be scared of finding yourself like me housebound and dying. Some I know imagine us sitting or lying in our beds, looking pale and doing nothing. They see our lives as ended, with nothing to do and no wish to do anything. Well it’s not like that. We’re still people, we still think, feel and wonder just like everyone else does. Life isn’t a living death, it’s still living. Yes, it has it scary moments, but it will also have it’s compensations, even if you can’t think of single one now, trust me, they will be there.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 07/05/2014 – You can’t hide

I deleted my Facebook account yesterday, I had been thinking about it now for a few months as it was taking up a disproportionate amount of time, to the number of people who were actually visiting the page daily. Everything has been slowly taking up more and more of my time, which really is more proof of the progress of my MS in the past couple of years, what used to be just a morning task with the rest of the day spent playing games and sleeping, has turned into something that takes every minute I have right through to 6:30 every evening and I knew something had to go. I did think about just stopping it and leaving it alone, but I know myself to well, if it was still there I would have still been logging in and just checking this or that, there was only one true answer and that meant deleting my account, so it is now gone! I guess the next few days will really show me just how much time it was eating up, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that it is as much as a couple of hours. I need to concentrate on the two things…..