Why do we keep lying to ourselves? I know I do it all the time, in fact, there is hardly an hour that passes without somewhere in my brain that a lie appears and to make it worse, I don’t think they are lies. Some even go further, I tell them not just to myself, but to Adam. There not huge, simple little things like, “I don’t need help, I can do that alone”. That’s probably the one I tell the most, “I can do that”. Actually, I just told that one about half an hour ago. Adam asked if I needed help to make my lunch, as if I did, he would go out later to the Bank instead of just then. I told my lie and ushered him out of the house. Why did I do that?

The answer if very simple and I’m sure that you’ve already worked it out, I don’t want to be the person who needs help. I know I am that person, but I don’t want to be. Of course, I needed help with my lunch. I was making seafood in my favourite homemade sauce, one teaspoon of ginger paste, one of garlic paste, two of honey, a good squeeze lemon juice, loads of shredded pickled ginger, and some butter. Put it in a bowl with the precooked muscles, prawns and squid rings, and microwave for 1min 40secs, season and eat. It’s simple, delicious and deadly. The deadly bit is that it produces a wonderfully flavoured broth, a broth that without great care slops out of the bowl and all over me. I’m not sure what is worse, the pain that boiling hot broth causes to my skin or the waste of something so delicious. So yes, I needed help but I wasn’t saying so, I was once again being me. If anyone was wondering why I asked for outside helpers to come in and cook my lunch for me, now you know. An outsider means I can’t say, I can do it, as they are there to do it for me.

I don’t like lies, and I really didn’t think of them as such. They are excuses, excuses for me to keep pretending to myself that I can do everything. You know something, it is far, far, harder for me to accept that I can’t do everything, than it was to accept that I am dying, how screwed up is that. I thought all of this was dealt with when I accepted having someone here to shower me, yet here I am, still struggling with my independence being taken from me, even if it is with my permission. I was asked the other day by someone who has been reading my blog for over a year on and off, if I could help them, with the same struggle. I confidently gave them a list of few posts from the last couple of months, as I thought at that second, that I had this one licked. Clearly, I was wrong and I apologise for that. I thought that I had it licked but suddenly, it has worked its way back up to the surface. When I caught myself doing it, I also realised that as I said at the start of this post, I’ve been lying to myself about it all along.

There really is something about out personal independence that is so deeply ingrained that any threat to it at all, is answered with an instant defence. I have discovered over and over that the same thing is required, I have to actually say out loud, that I am not able to do something. Not out loud to myself, but to Adam. It wasn’t enough that he was in the room when Laurie ask me if I wanted help and I said yes, I hadn’t said it to him and somehow, that has become what is important. When he came home, half way through my writing this, I told him without exception, if I am making myself a meal that is hot, he is to get in between me and the food and take over. Yes, I will be having to teach him how to cook most things, but he is to not let me physically put anything in, or take anything out, of either the oven or the microwave. I had to do just the same with my meds, my mail and everything else that I have handed over into his care, and it has worked. I now don’t bat an eyelid when he does any of the things I no longer do. I’m not even tempted any longer to open a letter with my name on it, it just goes in the pile for him to sort out when he gets home.

For me, that is the thing I now see I have to do, I have to make it know verbally, as sorry, writing it here, isn’t enough. Once said, it has become a contract, something that has to be stuck to on both sides and from there on, I start to accept it and to live with and to it. I know that it might not work for all, but as there is one thing I don’t like, telling lies, it is the perfect method. It doesn’t matter what care we are talking about, you have to be ready, to be able to say those words, and ready to live by the consequences. That’s what care is, it’s a contract between you and the person supplying it. Yes, if your not happy with how they do it, you can break the contract and find another way to solve the problem, as you are always in control. Verbalising it, takes it out of your head and into reality, and that’s the first step to accepting whatever the change is. Acceptance isn’t just one step, it’s many, many steps and each one takes adjustment. Step one is made, no more cooking for me when there is someone else who can do it for me. Now, I just have to accept it fully, I know from having the carers here to shower me, it will take me a few weeks to be comfortable, but nothing starts, without taking that first step.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 06/09/2014 – Joining the party

I didn’t realise it until a while after I wrote it, that I was opening a new chapter in my MS. I mentions that I was having gentle spasms, I can feel muscles getting tight but without reaching those solid painful climaxes I am all to families with. The first one I noticed what my stomach, at first I thought it was some kind of reaction to my eating or drinking something, which is why I went……