I found myself thinking back for some reason to the first couple of years after I left my husband and all the ridicules things that I did, just because I could. For the first time since I was 16 I was earning and supporting myself, but more than that I was living for all the years that I missed out on by becoming an adult far to early in my life. A series of events that started when I was just 12 removed any childhood I had left to live, but life gave me a chance to take it all back and run with it, which I did. I was out there, free and wilder than I had ever been, having fun, running free and making all the mistakes and happy memories that were missing from my life. What sparked me to think was a song that appeared in my head, it was a record that was played a lot in one of the local disco’s, where a friend and I did things that few would, from clearing the dance floor by simply how we danced together, entering wet tee-shirt contests and cheating right at the end by taking the tee-shirt off, oh and I could go on. As wild as I got I always went home alone, without the slightest regret and ready for the next time. Life never slowed down and never left me feeling alone, even thought that was just how I was, on my own. I realised that there was a strange parallel between that time and now, clearly the wild child is tamed but just as many might have thought my life lonely now, I know many thought my life lonely then just because I didn’t share it with a partner. The more I think about it, the more I realise that loneliness really is in our attitude, more than anywhere else. My life now is tame, I know that, but it’s just as full and just as happy, both lifestyles have worked for me as both have huge amounts of texture and huge possibility within them, that means I have no time to be lonely.

I love the fact that I can look back on my life, that my memories make me smile and laugh at all the mad things that I just did and enjoyed. I am so glad that I was that person, not held back from doing anything because I could and I didn’t have a care in the world as far as what others thought of me. I can now thank my father for having decided at 12 that I was worthless as it strangely made me want to make my life worth something to me if no one else. I also honestly think that it was part of my way of dealing with the dammed illness, every time it reduced me to nothing and tried to stop me from moving far less dancing, I became more determined to keep going. Each relapse pushed me into becoming fitter, I didn’t know I was fighting with MS, I was fighting with an unknown monster that attacked my muscle, my speech and my mind, fitness felt like the answer. At different points I exercised for two hour a day in the house, I swam 40 lengths of the local pool everyday and on days off I swam double, I danced for 4 plus hours every night. Not one stopped it happening again, but I still wonder if they helped in some way.

For two years before I met Adam, I had given up the wild life to settle myself into the business world, I didn’t have time to do both. In fact the very first time I met him, was just a couple of weeks after I had returned to work after a bad relapse, which the doctor wrote up as a virus, but that was our first simple hello. Two years after we married my illness changed and the rest is history as they say, but it was nearly four years without real exercise, four years where my muscles and body wasn’t pushed and pulled to extremes. It could be one of life’s coincidences but I can’t help but wonder if slowing down just let it take over. I haven’t read anything that says anything about a link between the two, but the possibility is there.

I think that is what most people fear about becoming housebound, they fear that all that texture and possibility will vanish, as how could it be maintained when the outside world has gone. On the most basic level it is no different than coming home from work on a Friday and not going out again until Monday, spending a weekend at home isn’t lonely, it isn’t boring or dull, it spending time in a world you have built and is yours and yours alone, what you do with that time is what you want to, not what your told to, so why would being housebound be any different? I don’t miss the wild child she was a source of wonderful memories and I am still making them, they didn’t end when the front door closed, they just became different. Life is the same for me now as it always has been, filled with things to do, thoughts to have, discoveries to be made, just slower and edged with pain.

17/02/12 Opening new opportunists > http://bit.ly/NYwmK5
This is a post that I am still angry that I had to write, discrimination is alive and well 😦