When I started this blog, its name came natural. At first, I
created the blog hoping to reach other
people facing similar issues (MS, Lyme, confusion, changes etc), and to avoid
that others will feel alone, as I felt so many times. Maybe to find together some
positive things that are happening in this chaos J
When I was diagnosed with Lyme, and I got to the Lyme
Clinique in Germany, the doctors that I met there gave me a list of support
websites, so that I knew “that I am not alone”. Full of hope, I was expecting
to see there success stories, healing stories. Instead, after watching first two
videos, I realized I only get depressed seeing the people, their diseases, in
all their grandiosity, wheelchairs and so on.
Ok, it is real, but not something I wanted to see under
antibiotics , when all my symptoms flared up, when I didn’t know if I would
walk again.
So at that point, I decided to write my own success story.
If on this whole Internet (at that point), I couldn’t find a story that would
inspire me, I promised myself I would do it. That I would find in myself that
last light of hope in the chaos of a progressive disease, and I will follow it,
to see where it gets me.
From my diagnosis, in 2005, when I didn’t ignored the disease, I fought
with it. Every step I took while struggling, when I felt the lack of power in
my leg, every effort to keep dancing when my legs didn’t help anymore, I
thought this struggle would be what would make me a winner in this fight.
Nevertheless, the disease progressed, without considering my
struggles, my ambitions. It progressed, in its own rhythm , slowly, constantly,
until I started feeling that maybe, this is not my solution. Maybe there is
something I’m not doing right.
And then I asked myself: “how about looking at it from
another angle? What it would be like , instead of fighting someone, something
that doesn’t exist (physically anyway, though I feel so present in my life
anyway!), I would just make peace? I would just accept it as a part of my life?”
Helped by personal psychotherapy and reading a lot on my own,
I started slowly changing things I once considered so much part of my life,
part of me. I started thinking at things I do, of which I am very much
attached, that aren’t even BAD things. And how would my life be if I changed
them. If I just stopped doing them: to think in a certain way, things I did all
my life…just because.
Maybe I was just taught to do them. Maybe they are not mine,
One example that comes to mind now is regarding my
boyfriends J. My mom always said that I should find someone that would
be very handy around the house, so that nothing would get broken, or at least
would get fixed fast. I thought that ok… this is something I could change. It
was never a bad think per se, and in theory, I agree that it would make life
easier to have someone in the house to fix things (!!) , but is that enough? Is
that something my happiness depends on? What would be like I just didn’t look
for this, and instead, I would let things happen? ( I really am a lot happier
now by just calling the mechanic when I need something fixing around the house!
)
And so, step by step, I started making critical changes:
changing perceptions, strong beliefs, that were not necessarily bad, were just
not fit, and they interfered with my happiness.
Ok,I continued exercising but stopped dancing, continued
living a healthy life, but with less self criticism and aggressivity towards
myself, more relaxed and loving.
.
Why do I think that a disease, life itself should not be
considered a fight? Because I saw can never win this fight. Life and MS showed
me that it can get worse in any moment.
Short while after my first symptoms, my dad died. Then, my
high school friends just left my side. Suddenly , my mom got sick. In the
meanwhile, MS was progressing . Things were getting worse. It can always get
worse. We can hope, stay positive, and
when I saw that was just not enough…? Clearly, what I was doing, for me, it
wasn’t working.
This approach of fight, of struggling, was not helping
anymore. The moment I started doing these critical changes, switching from “the
forever warrior” to a more spiritual person, who just decided to make peace with
life and to accept these changes and the implicit lessons that MS gave, was the
moment I started relaxing,
This doesn’t mean I found the magic MS cure, it doesn’t mean
I didn’t go trough other hard moments. Only now it seemed easier. I am more
relaxed, more careful with my body and my soul. In the same time, I learned how
to be grateful for every good, and not so good thing that is happening, to find
the positive side in almost everything, even in the darkest periods.
Since I embraced what is happening, other kind of people
came in my life, new doors opened, new opportunities and knowledge.
This is how I deal with this. For others, the idea of
fighter/fight, is working, and this is ok.
Me? I found other approach, and for me #lifeisnotafight is
working.
Love,
Florenta
