Not Magical

12-12-12 is the fourth anniversary of the worst day of my life.

***

She gets mad and she starts to cry

She takes a swing. Man, she can't hit

She don't mean no harm

She just don't know

What else to do about it

***

So here's the breakdown on my breakdown.

I've been basically unemployed since April 1, with about 10 weeks of temp employment over three months - July, August and September. I guess a little of October too. I've had just two face-to-face interviews in that time, and I've come in second both times.

I have limited weeks remaining on my Employment Insurance claim; we're running out of income. I found out today that it's a little bit longer than we thought, but I have more weeks paid out than I have weeks left in my claim at this point.

I'm not allowed to share publicly what Joe's situation is, but suffice it to say that he's not a slacker or kicking back, relaxing. We're in full scale panic at this point.

In looking at our options we are facing some really critical decisions in the next two weeks to two months.
Some of the options are, but not limited to:

1. Selling everything we can, throwing out what we can't, packing up whatever we can carry or afford to ship to my parents house, give notice on our apartment and leave for anywhere east of here that we can find jobs.
2. Another choice after giving notice is to split up and try to find jobs in two different places and whomever is successful first decides where we land.
3. Waiting it out to find a job and if my EI claim ends, Joe quits school and we go on welfare until one or both of us can find a job.
4. Joe would have to put off a whole bunch of educational goals for at least another 16 months if that is the case.
5. He's pissed that we even have to consider that, for a whole bunch of reasons not unrelated to industry ageism.

So, I've barely stopped crying. This still isn't as bad as being told I have MS, but it's pretty damn close.

***

I have been relapse free since my initial attack in December 2008. I have 98% of the faculties I had in 2007.

I have not used a cane since September 2011.

I have not needed to use my shower seat since 2010.

I have not slept for more than 10 hours in a row since 2009.

I have not had double vision since January 2009.

MS so far has not killed me, but it has not made me stronger.

***

I will be so happy when this year is over. Or this decade. Or this century.
I'm so fucking fed up with the realities of being me, I just want to quit.

In Thanksgiving

Why I Love My Husband

He is genuinely a good man.
He is a wickedly talented musician.
He is smart.
He is predictable.
He is silly when no one else is around.
He votes.
He is pragmatic.
He is wildly spontaneous.
He is driven.
He is hot.
He tolerates my crazy. Sometimes he even embraces it.
When I am with him I feel respected, loved and safe.

***

On this day in 2005 I got on the BC Ferries "Queen of Capilano" for the 17 minute ride to Snug Cove on Bowen Island, just off West Vancouver, BC. During that 17 minutes, Joe allowed me to make an honest man of him and enter into the legal contract of civil marriage with him.

I knew it was a good choice then. I think it was a great choice now. I am so thankful that we're together.

***

My love for you is turned all the way up to 11, baby. Happy Anniversary. It's been 7 years and I'm not itchy at all.

***

Sadly, my paternal grandmother died two years ago today. My thoughts are also with my dad and his two brothers.

I might add that it kind of sucks when a beloved family member dies on the happiest day of your life.

***

Today I am thankful for my stable health, my chosen and DNA families, the future and for having hope.

1 Less than 10

Nine years ago; almost this exact moment nine years ago, I took the biggest step in changing my life forever I had ever taken. It might actually be the biggest step I HAVE ever taken.

"The flight crew would like to be the first ones to welcome you to Vancouver. The local time is 10:35pm. It is 12 degrees and foggy. Thank you for flying JetsGo."

I had just spent more than 5 hours flying the Canadian airline equivalent to riding Greyhound. I had about 1/3 of my worldly possessions with me on that flight, having sent the other 2/3 out by Greyhound over the two previous weeks.

Meeting me at the domestic baggage carousel were two people. The first was my best friend whom I had not seen in more than a year and the guy I'd met online that I had been flirting with for 6 weeks or so before deciding to pack my shit and go west.

My best friend needed me, I needed out of my old life, and the contract for my job had run out. The local prospects for employment had dried up and I needed to get the fuck out of that small town I had been forced to move to in order to keep my job after my previous relationship had broken up.

I was taking the biggest risk of my entire life. I was 29. I was single. I was without hope, limited in every respect by not only what other people thought of me but by what I thought of myself. I needed to move on and to find a way to reinvent myself.

In the time honoured tradition of 18 to 30 year-old Ontarians who have no fucking clue what to do with their lives, I got on the plane to Vancouver with everything I had in the world and a couple thousand dollars in the bank. This was going to be the best thing ever.

It wasn't. But it totally wasn't the worst thing ever either. I would not be the person I am today if it weren't for getting off that plane at YVR on September 20, 2003.

The best friend isn't my best friend any more. In fact I've talked to her three times in 8 years.

I haven't spoken to the guy I met on the internet in more than 2 years, and that was the first time I'd spoken to him in 4 years before that. He disappeared off the internet in 2010 and I just have no idea where he might be.

In fact, of everyone who was in my life at the time, I don't speak to any of them. Connections lost, none of them I particularly miss. I'm pretty good with all of it.

Nine years on the Left Coast. It's been real.

Or something.

Ifs

I was as sure then as I am now that it was the best choice I could have made at the time and I am as certain now as I was then that I did the right thing.

It was the path that was going to lead me to a new life, and it did, just not the life I thought I wanted to walk into. This one is much better. This one has different limitations.

If it had lasted. If I hadn't caught him in bed with a young woman I knew from high school who was mainly trying to get even for me dating her ex-"fiancé" 9 months after they had broke up. If hadn't been drinking so much. If I hadn't been drinking so often. If hadn't been trying to cram myself into a gender stereotype that didn't fit.

If I hadn't been trying to find a way to live with myself and what I was told I should be ashamed of.

If I hadn't learned the lessons...

Today would be my 19th wedding anniversary. The 19th anniversary doesn't come with a traditional gift, so I can't even crack wise about missing out on the "papier maché"or "aluminum foil" anniversary.

I could have been married for exactly half my life today had he not had the sense to cheat on me and treat me so terribly that I had to go looking for Plan B. That's the truth of it. I would be someone completely different than I am now if he hadn't done that.

For the record, my Plan B was terrible. But it got me to the place where I read the books that changed my mind, which led me to the place where I learned about the internet and through the internet I figured out how to use my words. And when I finally, FINALLY, learned to use my words I realized that the guy had done me a favour. I had limited my life to what I thought was expected of someone of whom little was expected as soon as he handed me the ring. The failure of our marriage after seven and a half months (plus three additional months of drama, emotional blackmail, threats, violence, reconciliation, more drama, more threats and spending a night in jail) was the humiliation I needed to reconsider my future.

Not that I saw it like that at the time. Oh no, I was mad. Mad in the English sense of the word, not the North American one. I was broken and fallen and tired of living and I would not turn 20 until the week before the drama ended.

I didn't know it then but I know it now, my divorce was the first step I took toward saving my own life.

Rob, I have no clue where you are but I hope that you are happy. I also hope that you are as happy as I am that this isn't our wedding anniversary.

Three years.

There is a view of the Lions that can only be had from the SkyTrain on the track between Main Street - Science World and Commercial-Broadway Stations. Because of how fast the train moves and how crappy my camera is I've never been able to catch a non-blurry photo of it. I'm not incredibly enamoured by the mountains, but that 1 minute of time is my favourite view of my favourite range.

Not the view, but close...

Photo By vermillion$baby on flickr.com

Today is my third MS-iversary. I've been trying not to feel anything about today at all. I've failed, because I'm just sad. Every single thing about my life changed three years ago, leaving nothing untouched. I've obsessed over every choice I have ever made, wondering constantly if I would have had the life I do if I had been diagnosed with this when I was younger, or if I had questioned any of the crazy things my brain had done earlier in my life.

But mostly I just feel ugly and stupid. My cognitive issues plague me. I can't remember things and have constant problems with word selection and that makes me feel like an idiot, especially when people laugh at my stupid word choices. I still weigh 40 lbs more than I used to and I don't even recognize my body when I catch a glimpse in the mirror. My hair and skin have been fucked up since the mitoxantrone and no amount of skin and hair consultations have fixed it.

The good stuff is that Joe and I are still together, we're still very much in love and I would not be where I am if it were not for him. He's exactly 5 days away from finishing his BA in Poli-Sci and I could not be more proud of him for sticking it out and doing as well as he did in spite of the fact that he has a sick, crazy wife and very little money or available credit.

I have not used a cane in over three months, probably closer to four. I have not had to go to bed immediately upon arriving home from work in more than two years. I have a job that, while not incredibly fulfilling or interesting, pays the bills and does not leave me suicidal. I can walk, I have 20/20 vision, very little in the way of intrusive MS symptoms, and I continue to hope for a cure and a way to undo the damage already done.

My MS Walk page will be up in the New Year and I hope to work with Team Gl*tterB*tches to do one big event as well as our regular fund raising. I love my B*tches. They're great people and another bit of good stuff in my life.

I continue to put one foot in front of the other and suit up and show up for my daily obligations. I remain hopeful that one day I will figure out what I want to be when I grow up and that will allow me to not be broke while being happy.

I'm going to try to do things differently in the next year. I don't want to say what, or how, because every time I make broad pronouncements about what I want to do I fail miserably. One thing I have found out in the past year is that people who love you so very rarely hold you accountable for failures if they don't think what you're failing at is important or necessary.

I think about the past too much. If you've known me since before 2003 I'm probably thinking about you right now.

All the Way to Up to Eleven

October 8, 2005 changed my life.

Under different circumstances I would not have been on the Queen of Capilano from Horseshoe Bay to Snug Cove.

I wasn't nervous because I knew that it was the only way we could be together and what I wanted more than to marry was to be together. Marriage was the only way I could get what I wanted. So maybe because of that I tried a little harder to make sure that I didn't end up being the one word reason as to why my husband couldn't have fun.

"Wanna go out Friday night?"

"No. Can't."

"Why?"

"Wife."

I didn't want to be that person.

One day he said he was going to talk to an academic advisor at the local college. When I got home from work he told me that he was starting college on Monday and had quit his job. I didn't freak out because I knew that whatever he had signed himself up for was going to be a good investment.

He worked his ass off and has got amazing grades. I'm really proud of him. He graduates in December.

When I got sick I told him that if he was going to leave because I was sick to do it then. I would be able to work out other arrangements.

He didn't leave. He hasn't been anything but supportive and encouraging.

There have been times, especially in the first year and a bit, when I threw my hands up and wondered aloud why I had done this. Why had I dragged a man out of his country to marry him when obviously it wasn't going to work out? How could I have been so stupid?

We ended up working that out. Since then there hasn't been a problem that we couldn't work out.

I don't know what the future is going to bring. I just know that after 6 years of civil marriage and almost 7 years together we're still a team. I also know that I have never committed to doing anything, ever, day in and day out for six straight years. Hell, in the course of that time I've been through 4 different hair colours.

We got through the chronically broke year of him not being able to work, we got through the nearly always broke year of his first three semesters of school, we got through the very, very broke 9 months of me on disability. We got through the terrible confusion and misunderstandings that happened in the 6 months after my diagnosis and relapse.

I'd like to think that we got through it because we wanted to be together more than we wanted to walk away; but I must admit there were times early on when only my legal obligations to him as his immigration sponsor kept me from packing my shit and leaving. With those obligations done I think that I stay for the same reasons I got into this in the first place.

I want us to be together. I married him because I couldn't live with the "What if..." of not knowing if it could work out. I don't know what the ending is yet and I'm in no hurry to find out what the conclusion is to our story. Every single day I am full of love, appreciation and gratitude that we decided to embark on this great experiment together.

Happy Anniversary, Baby. My love for you is turned all the way up to eleven.