whatilost

[whatilost]

F this

I'm ill. I've been thinking about it non-stop for the past six months yet I don't think it's fully sunk in. I told everyone. I'm trying to adjust. But even through the constant reminders in my mind and in my body, I don't think I get it. I must be an imposter. Something else is wrong. It's just a mild form and I'm pretending, making it worse for clout and pity and drama. I'm just lazy and comfortable not pushing myself, a hypochondriac at best.

So I'm sitting on the couch after I've failed to fall asleep and I've cried myself into some kind of temporary acceptance. I have lost things, when I think about it - I keep losing things. I lose parts of myself, my strength, my face, at least the way I wanted to show it to the world. I was just becoming who I was supposed to be, already late with it. Already something eating at me, and I felt it.

I keep forgetting the things I fight with every days, that aren't normal, but that I brush off because it's not something you can see.

Every morning I wake up not knowing how I'll be. Sometimes everything hurts the moment I open my eyes and my limbs are asleep. I lie down and hold my phone and I stop feeling my pinkies. If I stand too long I can't feel my toes. If I sit too long I discover a new body part that I can lose sensation in. My hands get so stiff when it's a tiny bit cold, so much that I can't write or do anything requiring fine motor skills. They're shaky and unsteady either way. But what I really hate is when my whole body twitches, muscles, joints, for hours, sometimes days.

I sometimes get dizzy, like I'm walking on a boat in a storm that's capsizing, I'm being dragged to one side. I walk around the shops and although it hasn't yet happened, I'm panicking about walking into something, turning over a display. I always bump into people. The anxiety of floating on a tilting cloud that can potentially throw me whichever way, because it could get worse at any point. It hasn't, yet. But it's only been seven months.

I've become accoustomed to the fact that public transport is now making me sick. I take the bus to school often, worrying it will be too warm, too many people, too many smells. Preemptively take off all my coats and scarves because I can't deal with hot temperatures. I'll start sweating, I'll feel nauseated, I'll get palpitations, chest pains, diziness, feeling like I'm going to pass out. Always have to have a water bottle with me, just in case. Always have to have a case of pills with me, just in case. Pills for motion sickness, headache, hearburn, general body ache, anxiety, for keeping alert.

Before I get off the bus I move my feet to get my circulation going. If not I'm most likely going to feel light headed. I probably will anyway. I always feel a bit like I'm going to pass out getting off the bus or the train. Sometimes I have to wait it out, holding on to whatever is near and breathe. Dizzy and sweaty. Lightheaded. I'm fine. I start moving again. In a few minutes it's gonna pass. A few minutes a few times a day. I haven't thrown up, yet.

Even as I'm writing this, I feel like I'm just fishing for pity. People have it worse, I can still walk. So my legs are tingling, pins and needles. So I can't feel some toes and stumble a bit, not noticeably, just enough for me to feel something being off. Big deal.

The diziness and fatigue is the worse. My heart racing is close second. I can't do what I want to do, I can't think like I want to, I don't see things clearly sometimes. I look into my course work and I know that I can't, because of the fog and the nausea and the pain. I'm so tired, all the time, but when I read the accounts of other MS sufferers, I'm not sure I'm tired enough, if my tiredness warrants the right to complain. I have this feeling within, like something is scratching my bones, something is very off but I can't put my finger on what it is. It's like a headache of my whole body, not enough to debilitate but just enough to not be able to focus on anything properly, like a scratchy throat of my whole body. And if I ignore it, and I do ignore it, my heart racing, the sweats, the nausea and the aches. The pains that come and go, everywhere, my limbs, icepicks in my head, shooting pains through my torso, like someone's picked a bunch of nerve threads out of my chest and tugged on them.

My stomach is never ok. Heartburn or indigestion or constipation or bloating and pains and the constant peeing. I should eat better, but I have a hard time planning for it. If I want to do something in a day, cooking is the thing I skip on.

I couldn't sleep because my heart was racing and everything hurt. Ice pick headache again. It's been a while. Sometimes I see zigzags and sometimes I see flashes of light with my eyes closed. Today I just couldn't deal with it. I just couldn't deal.

I don't know what my life will be like. I know it's not normal to take the elevator because I worry I will be a wreck in front of people if I take the stairs. I know it's fucked up to be so tired after a few hours of studying that I get a nervous breakdown. I'm never gonna be able to work full time, in anything. I'm never gonna be able to go on holidays without worrying ill spend the week feeling awful, I don't know if I'll ever dare travel to a country without finding out where the hospitals are, at the same time I can't plan ahead because what if the planned time is a bad time. I think my friends don't get it, because I don't really get it either, not to push me, how much to push me, how much to let me rest.

"Oh I'm tired too"

And I believe you are but when I say I need to rest I mean I need to rest because I will crash. When I say I'm hungry and need to eat I mean because I'm feeling like I'm about to pass out.

I keep trying to be normal, to not ruin things for people, for my boyfriend, by minimazing how dizzy and how weird and weak I feel, when we're supposed to be doing something, when we're home, when we're out on a date. I don't want to just be on the sofa and be lazy, I want to show I'm productive but I so often have to go against everything I've described, all the stupid symptoms in different constellations while forgetting words and laughing it off, while being anxious, so fucking anxious because it feels like it's a steep downward slope and I can't do anything about it, I just go on pretending that I'm at least moderately ok while I'm completely losing my shit about getting paralysed, about not having any money in the future, about really wanting to have kids but not knowing if i could ever take care of them, about being a massive burden and being so grumpy, constantly complaining of ms and of being tired but of course everyone is tired and I should just get off my ass, I should just give myself a little push and everything would work out, because it doesn for everyone and I'm not so different, I'm just a little ill, just a little bit ill.

Or, you know. A fair amount.