It’s been a hot minute since I have posted anything because I haven’t been quite sure what to write. I moved over the summer and that went well. Managed to make the drive through Canada without much incident. All my bills were paid, I found a job I loved, and I was connecting with the loved ones family well. My symptoms from my MS seemed to be under control. I was trying to write about my trip through Canada but I was having a hard time finishing that particular series of posts. I didn’t feel like it was connecting with my target audience the way I wanted it to. And I couldn’t think of any childhood stories I had wanted to share to continue working on that series. 

I had run out of my mental health medication for a bit there and that was an adventure. It had been a few years since I had been unmedicated for mental health for any significant amount of time, but as I had in the past, I dealt with it. Not much fuss. Nothing wildly out of my ordinary that I could share that would be any kind of interesting without just sounding like a bunch of whining- or at least that is what I had convinced myself of. Then I got back on my meds and it went back to being fine and my approximation of normal again. 

When people are happy and things are going well, sometimes it’s hard to find things to share that you feel other people would be interested in. In my personal experience, people don’t always like to hear about when things are going really well in your life. Don’t get me wrong, there are feel good stories out there for a reason and my loved ones love knowing that I am happy, healthy, and taken care of. But when someone’s life is going really well and they are having success after success after success, it can be hard to share in that happiness rather than feeling like there is something wrong with you. I find, when reading posts that are all about joys and blessings and nothing but positivity without seeing struggles, I often wonder what’s wrong with them that they aren’t sharing or I feel like my own life is somehow failing. 

There is a certain comradery in shared hardship. A certain feeling of connection in knowing someone else is struggling too. A feeling of not being alone in the world when you know that someone at least sort of knows what it feels like to not be totally okay. 

Things were going fine in my life and I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to share because I didn’t want to feel like I was rubbing it in that I had beat my MS symptoms and was getting back to normal. I do wonder what that says about me that I was hesitant to share my joy with the world. 

And I wonder what else it says about me that when my joy ended I had to take a beat before I could start writing about it again. 

I thought I’d had my symptoms under control enough to go back to work. I thought I’d figured it out. So I took a job and it was great to be working again in a field that I love. I didn’t mind my hour-long (one way) commute. It was time to listen to my audio books, music, and work on my Spanish. My boss and coworkers seemed cool and supportive. I felt like I was a part of something. 

But, I had gone from getting maybe 2,000 steps in a day to over 10,000 steps daily over night. And I had gone from being able to rest whenever I needed, taking my time, and giving my brain a break to go go go all the time without much breaks in the blink of an eye. I had thought I was ready for it because I hadn’t been having many incidents. 

I was not. 

I was very much not. 

And my body told me all about it. 

I lasted at that job maybe two weeks before my body revolted and I started with my pseudo seizures again. I stopped being able to even make it to work because I couldn’t drive without triggering an episode. And when I got a ride to work the pseudo seizures would get worse, to the point of losing speech and mobility. 

It was awful and the decision to let that job go was made. More regressions have occurred since then.Typing is getting hard again, some days it’s difficult to play video games. My glasses are starting to bug my eyes again, and there are times happening more and more frequently that my brain and the right side of my body just do not want to communicate well. I have been tired more, sleeping more, and struggling to find the motivation to move about the way I know I need to.  And what really sucks is that I can’t seem to get to a neurologist until December so that is fun. 

Now I am back to being a housewife and I’ll be honest, I am going nuts. I’ve never been a good house wife. I get bored without mental stimulation and social interaction with people I work with. To top that off I am just socially awkward enough that going out to meet people in groups without support of someone I know well is almost debilitatingly scary. It doesn’t help that we’re down to one car and driving is hit or miss with me anyway. 

Things are getting hard again. And with the hardship comes the creativity and desire to write and share my struggles once more so here I am typing up a blog post after not having written one in months.  

What does that say about me, I wonder…

I’ll try not to think about that too hard.