Judging or not-judging...

For me MS made fundamental changes. I started caring more for myself, doing things proactively when I have a problem , instead of pitying myself, playing the victim ( as I I used to – I do accept it to myself now).

Now, MS puts me in all kinds of situations. As I overran the stage in which I was struggling to accept the fact that I have MS, I started living with MS. As fully as I am able to. Doing all the things I can, and choosing not to be frustrated about the ones I can’t do because simply  I’m not able to do.

As going to the gym. Exercising with weights, building up my muscles, which helps me on so many levels. Most of all, because I struggle to walk. Sometimes, I’m not sure that I would be able to walk at all if I wouldn’t keep on exercising. I feel good about it. And when it seems I’m putting so much effort into it, I comfort myself with the thought that everybody at the gym puts effort into it also. Starting with people that , maybe only a month before, were just couch & TV fans, to ladies that just go at the gym during the summer, in order to look good in their bathing suits. And that is fine! It is a step forward, even if done only for the summer. 

So yesterday, it stroke me. I was at the end of my routine, after 60 minutes of what I call “hard-work”, catching up my breath on the bench where I finished the arms workout. Something, probably, insignificant happened, but that for me woke up so many feelings and thoughts. A guy from the gym, that I didn’t know, threw me a phrase, that initially angered me, then made me sad, then made me smile.

 I’ll explain.

While I was ravished, after finishing the last series of the day, the guy (whom I didn’t know him, never saw him before at the gym), while passing my way, told me to 

speed up, that this is not a Monday morning anyway 

(it was Wednesday, so he was right…), on a tone that implied I’m one of the lazy ones. Of course, this might have been my own interpretation for the moment, in fact I’m sure it had nothing to do with him and what he said, but mostly to what I think (about myself, about my condition etc).

I didn’t say anything, just smiled, but I was feeling the anger getting to me. Ok, my cane was on the floor, so he wouldn’t have seen it. And all kinds of thoughts started wandering through my mind (“who does he thinks he is? I don’t remember hiring him as a private trainer!!”, “Do you go around judging people you don’t know as a day-job, checking their involvement at the gym?” and so many others, finishing with “I’m not sure you would even be here, in my condition!”). 

Then the anger transformed in sadness, thinking about how I could have done more, if I was healthy and MS-free.

But I shaken off all these thoughts, remembering that I already burned these stages, and that I came to accept Multiple Sclerosis in my life, even when people/ the world would challenge me. In the end, he had no way to know I have such a disease!

And this is the point! We can’t possibly know what is going on in people’s lives, in their minds and there souls. If we knew, maybe many behaviors would make sense to us. Even for him! Maybe he was bullied during high-school, so he grew up working out at the gym, to prove to the world nobody can ever bully him again. 

We tend to judge so easily, without knowing the facts. Multiple Sclerosis taught me not to judge, as I analyzed myself going through so many episodes, so many stages, that got me behaving perhaps very differently than normal . That,  in the end, made me who I am now.

Love, 

Florența