There are horses standing in those rocks up there in that picture...or, have the rocks been painted to give the appearance of horses? These are the types of questions that plague my mind at 3:00AM while undergoing Solumedrol treatments for what is believed to be a recent exacerbation of my Multiple Sclerosis...or IS it?I stare down at my arms and hands resting on this laptop key board and I note the bruising and swelling of holes, where countless needles have dared to invade my inner most spaces. My left wrist is bandaged with netting and gauze and thin pieces of IV tubing pressed tightly against my body...a reminder there is some *wound*...some sort of healing still waiting on the horizon. A view of my life that has become normalized in the most subtle of ways...complacent with surrender. After several days turning into several months turning into 6 years of seeing this same scene play out over and over in my life, my mind no longer adjusts my eyes to look for the *horses in the rocks*...I only see gauze, tape, tubing, and puncture wounds...I see what has become an accepted part of my life with MS.
I don't know the exact day or hour I allowed my mind and Spirit to believe this way of life was no longer an illusion...that this IS my reality...at least for today. But I do very much yearn for my illusion to return...I miss the wild horses I once saw in the rocks on my MS. I miss having the faith I will see them return in my mind again. I appear to be suffering from a lack of faith at the moment...a lack of belief in things unseen.
Perhaps faith is the grandest illusion of them all?...
Faith itself is real but what we have faith in my often be an illusion. You can have faith that this will pass because it has before and it will again.
ReplyDeleteI too remember the illusions produced by high doses of steroids. Perhaps once we recognize what they are we can no longer access them. I wonder...
Hello,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you faith is an illusion but can also understand why this illusion is kept alive.
Its like the Emperors new clothes everyone agrees they are gorgeous except the person who can see that the Emperor is naked.
These are kept alive as if people saw the illusion it means they are thinking independantly.
The faith institutions do not want that then their brand will be out of business!
Love,
Herrad
ps Had one father and do not need anymore daddies to tell me how to behave.
Yes, Virginia, it's true, people at work do read your blog. Several of us have been laid out for days with a nasty virus, I wonder if you've got a mutated version? I miss seeing you, I have no one to provoke. Watch out for the bats, you never see 'em coming.....
ReplyDeleteI think life is the grandest illusion of them all.
ReplyDeleteAw, Linda, even in misery you are so eloquent. That post made me cry. Took me a while to see the horses but now I can't NOT see them. Perhaps that makes an equally explanatory metaphor for *seeing* one's MS?
ReplyDeleteYou can either keep tricking yourself that you only have rocks, but once you have seen the horses you can never go back.
You know, if I only had one Fingolimod capsule left, I would split it with you. But I've got a whole bunch so no dice, they're all mine. :P
I can't wait for this stuff to get approved so you can try it. I'm hoping it helps others as much as it's appeared to help me...
Or maybe that's MY illusion of faith...I so badly want to believe that it IS helping that my mind alone has kept the solumedrol at bay. hmmmm
I know you are already telling yourself this but...
This too shall pass, my friend. Hang in there.
(((hugs)))
Jeri
I have no faith anymore. Somewhere along the line my belief systems decided to stop believing in me... which would be great but my very religious Aunt says that I may have forgotten my belief systems, but they haven't forgotten me, throwing some doubt over my theory. Nice try, Auntie, but I still am not talking to my belief systems yet.
ReplyDeleteGeez, Cheese! I looked at that trippy-ass picture for a while and was digging the mind-f@*K until I READ your sad post. Good thing you've got all those nice friends above me to cheer you up, but I can't help you much with faith.
ReplyDeleteI've got the kanji symbol for faith tattooed between my shoulder blades. I got it in a language that's completely foreign to me because that's how my relationship with faith has always felt. At the same time, it's as close as my own skin, and it always follows me around even though I can't ever make any damn sense of it, and I've often tried to run away from it. I realized at the tender age of 18 (my first tattoo!), that faith was something I would never really GET, but could never get away from. 12 years later, I still don't understand chinese. :)
hang in there.
One definition of Faith is it's the assured expectation of things to come. With MS there is no assurance your body will get better,mainly we have the hope we won't get worse. Hence it's so easy to get down and depressed. We all need to have hope, feel a purpose for our life and to feel loved.
ReplyDeleteI know you have hope: a hope that your words and actions help others to cope better with their own lives -- and I'm not talking just through your blog or those afflicted with MS.
You also have a purpose: to reach out to others and help. You achieve that on a regular basis through your work and "other life," and you do it well because you CARE and have COMPASSION.
You might not have the intimate love some many of use desire, but you do have friends (and doctors) who love you and a whole lot of peeps caring about you.
Right now is YOUR time of need; the extra need to feel pampered and loved and validated. That's no illusion. It's called being human in this trialsome and difficult system of life.
I spent years not hugging people, pushing them away. Ironically because my own neediness was so great. Then I got MS. I still don't want hugs from just anyway. However, (and I "blame" this on side effects from my medications) I will now accept -- and even ask for hugs -- from those I'm close to, and I've allowed friends into my life I wouldn't have otherwise (OK, I still hit some if I don't want to be close to them). I've also discovered a few close friends who tell me "it's OK," when my mind goes on a tangent and I email or call them multiple times about some angst I'm feeling. Yes, I realize I must limit those neurotic days, or at least try to spread them out so one friend doesn't get hit all at once so my neediness becomes too much to bear. Sometimes it's hard to draw that line the void in my heart is so great. I appologize, fearing I've become too much, and then to hear, "It's OK..."
And yet. it's those simple words from them that I so appreciate.
I know you have friends
like that in your life LD, and when they can't be found you have a great many faithful "Peeps."
Hang in there Babe!
My computer hasn't worked for a week. I am so sorry to come back to your blog to find you having more trouble with your MS. I really have nothing wise ( I have just had MS far too long )to say but I want to echo Spaz Attacks thoughts to you--
ReplyDeleteI lost my "faith" when my husband divorced me on the spot (and brought his second or was it his third, fourth or fifth?) girlfriend to court.
ReplyDeleteAnd I lost my "faith" when I followed all the court injunctions yet he rewarded. I ended up being suckered by thinking justice would prevail.
MS is a dastardly beast. Do I have faith I will overcome it? I can't lie and play Mary Poppins and sing "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" because some of us DO overcome and some of us don't. None of us know which group we fall into.
Braincheese, you have a lot of fans pulling for you. (((hugs)))