The Angry Woman's Guide to MS

Historiann has been writing/collecting a series of posts called Lessons for Girls. The first one, by Historiann herself, is about anger.

If I wish I had learned one lesson earlier in life, it’s this:  it’s okay to be angry, it’s okay to make other people angry, and anger can work for you.

I am angry. I am angry all of the time. And I'm really sick of people who think that angry is unnatural; that I should try to find the blessings in my life, that I should try to "get over it". People tell me they are concerned about how miserable I am, when it actually seems to mean that I am making life unpleasant for those around me.

If it weren't for my absolute rage, I'd still be in bed 10 to 15 hours a day, and I'd have lots of support for that inaction because no one wants to make me angry. I'm going to the psychiatrist because everyone thinks that not having a will to live and not having a meaning or reason for my life is a problem, even though I don't.

My anger will be medicated away to make other people comfortable.

Everything I wanted for my life is gone, yet everyone around me says that I should be grateful that I'm not dying. Or I should just "think positively" because things are going to be different in 6 months, or a year, or a decade.

My present anger isn't going to change the fact that things will be different at a later date. Please stop treating me like a child. If I had won the lottery on Wednesday, the first thing I would've done is found someone in Canada, the UK or the USA to give me a stem cell transplant to see if it would stop the MS. I don't care that it's dangerous or might have killed me. If I am not healthy and somewhat normal, I'm pretty sure that I don't want to live.

Everyone in my life seems to think that that attitude is crazy and that I'm depressed and borderline suicidal. I don't think that I am. I think that my reaction to the way MS has shown up in my life is perfectly rational, given the way I have always looked at life, living and death.

But I soldier on because I don't have any humane options for ending my life here in Canada. The options I have would also be very difficult on my family and I don't wish to burden them any more than I already have in my life.

So I'm not going to apologize for my anger. I am not going to back away from it, and when people start feeding me the bullshit that makes me the angriest, I will say so.

Forcefully.