New Year nerves

I am sitting here with a glass of buck fizz, Oliver Twist on the TV and Adam snoring, it may be a New Year but somethings don’t change. lol. I woke briefly early this morning as I was in pain down my left side again, it was more I think to the strange position I was in, propped on the back of one hip as though I hadn’t actually had the energy to move fully onto my back as I normally do. I always go to sleep on my side then roll to my back and stay there for the rest of the night, I know this is a fact as there is no sign of movement in the sheets and if I have straightened my hair it is as straight as when I lay down the night before. I guess last night I got stuck part of the way and just gave up, but the result was that this morning I could hardly move, I was so stiff that it was a struggle to get out or to put my dressing gown on. I often wondered how I manage to sleep when clearly my body is in pain, you would think that I would wake because of it and not be able to sleep again, if I can’t deal with pain when a wake how can I when asleep?

For the past couple of days I have had really bad nerve pain, they are shooting in two directions at the same time but I am not sure where they start. The fly upwards to just behind my left ear and down to my finger tips, on occasions not making it that far and stopping just above my wrist. Nerve pains are so unpredictable and when they start they take days to calm down, I have never found a reason for them starting and each and everyone makes you cringe until it passes. They may well be short in the time they hang around, but the pain level is horrendous, add to that their unpredictability and you are left just waiting for the next for ever, stop thinking and bang there is another. It would be bad enough if it were just that one but I have also one sparking away to itself in my left leg, why is it always the left side of my body that causes me so many problems? The strangest thing about the pain in my leg is that I also feel sick with it and sort of dizzy, all the fun of having MS.

New years is all about looking to the future and making plans of what we wish would happen, I learned a long time ago that those wishes rarely come true and looking to far ahead doesn’t achieve anything, it’s like a weather forecast, the future is unknown. I also think that looking too far ahead would be depressing for anyone in my position. I really believe that taking life each day at a time is the best way, if I sat here making plans for next month or next year I know that my health would get in the way and disappointment would be the only real result. So today is it nothing more ahead just a day to be enjoyed and made the most of, who knows what will happen in an hour.

It has just touched 11:30 and although on any other day of the year I would still be leaving Adam to sleep, there is a tradition that on New Years day we have a cooked breakfast, one that on the surface sounds expensive but it’s not. I always make scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and croissants, buy salmon scraps and it all costs less than a pound, but is totally delicious. Traditions have to be held to even if it is several hours later than I would have liked it. Have a great New Year, breakfast is calling.

Years End

Well we are here again the end of another year. I used to think it was just one of those things that older people said without there being any reality behind it, but the years really do get faster and faster. In my position you would expect that time would drag, as cut off from all the things that fills a normal day for most that I would be lost for things to do or to even think about. But here I sit day in day out and time vanishes faster than I can keep track of it. Looking at life from this end of it back to childhood, I would have expected the fastest moving part would have been as a child, with so much to see and to learn time should be filled completely and everyday an adventure, but tell a child they have to wait a week and it is like giving them a life sentence. So one more has gone, and one more is notched up to experience tucked away and half forgotten already.

I have always had a great desire to be one of those people who seem to remember everything, rather funny when you think about it from where I am now, but I can remember sitting listening to adults telling stories in a way that made you feel they had memorized a book word for word. I wanted to be able to relate my life in that way, and not just my life but the contents of an encyclopedias. I did actually sit down once with the intention of reading the entire contents of the encyclopedia I had at home, I think I managed the first two books and them never went back to them. I realized I was wasting my time, not because I had a bad memory then, but I just didn’t have a good enough one.

At this time of year we all look back at our lives making plans to change that or put something else right, but that is something I have noticed that health also changes. I no longer do that. I guess when your values are changed, which there is no doubt that they are, that small things don’t matter in the same way. So what if I smoke too much, drink too much or still haven finished reading my encyclopedia, nothing like that really matters. I look back over the last year and I feel really very little about what has and hasn’t happened, what matters so much more now is one simple word, happiness. To be able to say that I have spent the bulk of this year happy, means so much more than I ever thought it would. This will sound silly but it really is a happiness that give you a warm feeling, a contentment that fills you and gives you the strength that allows you to accept that life is what it is, not flashy or fancy, but happy. I actually don’t think I though about happiness a great deal years ago, my life was so much more about having work, money, belongings and a home. I was like everyone else racing around chasing dreams that weren’t actually mine, but the ones that I had acquired from friends, family and society, I like so many others had missed the point of life, life isn’t about things, it’s about being happy. It is just a shame that it took something so traumatic to teach me that, something that all the learning in the world I don’t believe that I would have grasped. It is also the one thing that I see so many others missing as well. Being promoted at work is great, but is all the extra work and money really what makes you happy, wouldn’t having more time with those you love and more time to rest and enjoy life, make you happier than that new shinny car?

It sounds such a simple thing but it really changed my life, I stopped existing and being busy and started to be happy regardless of all the pain, the lack of money and the isolation. Yes this is the time of year we all look back, but it is one of a handful of years where I can actually say it was a happy year and I can smile as it ends, I can smile because I am looking forward to another happy year. I wish all of you reading a HAPPY New Year and one that at the end, you too can look back and say you found true happiness.