Christmas with you

This is a little appreciation post I’ve been meaning to write for some time but haven’t quite managed.

I wrote my first blog post here in March and back then I didn’t imagine that such amazing people with such meaningful experiences were going to read me. Least of all that around six months later I would be nominated for awards. I was nominated for the One Lovely Blog Award by Life in Slow Motion and by A Body of Hope, and for the Liebster Award by Love My Life Anyway and by Invisible Pain Warriors.

I didn’t accept any of the nominations for two reasons. One is that I had a relapse in September and my life turned upside down, with bad news, MRIs, blood tests, changes in medication, struggling not to drop out of college, and finally feeling a new round of depression knocking on the door from the end of October until now. The other reason is I love so many different blogs that I can’t pick them all. You see, I’m a Libra, making decisions is hard for me. 😉 And mentioning some blogs while leaving the others just didn’t seem fair.

When this journey began, I envisioned this blog as a source of information on everything I’ve been researching since my MS, endo and PTSD diagnoses. It actually took on a totally different shape. It became more personal. An outlet for questions, doubts, reflections and occasional angry rants. I sometimes wondered how to grow my number of followers and I wrote a couple of posts with “10 tips” and how-to topics because they seem so popular. They’re still in the drafts folder as I never published them. They’re just not me. I figured if my writing were true to myself the right people would show up, like and comment.

They did, and became like a family to me. I needed that. A chronic illness diagnosis sets you apart from everyone else. It isolates you. With MS, because it manifests itself in such different ways from patient to patient, it even isolates you from other MS fighters who may never have experienced your symptoms. In the three years since I got the bad news, I realized some of my friends were really not good friends at all, so I chose to let go of them. And even with the friends I have that are absolutely wonderful, they just don’t know what it’s like. They listen, they try to comfort, but they have no idea.

So that leaves me with how important the interactions with you are for me. And you know who you are. You are the ones who read me and get me, no matter how flawed and lost I may be. You are the ones I read religiously, I care about and worry about when you’re too quiet. You probably have no idea how the kind words you left me felt so supportive many times. I sometimes wish I had more spoons to leave you more comments like that, but in the end of a busy day my mind is often unable to complete a sentence in English that will make sense to you.

Christmas is hard for me because my family is the definition of dysfunctional. And New Year is also hard for me because it makes you look back, look ahead – and I can’t help but feel overwhelmed and hopeless. But I guess I can take them as chances to stop and thank you for your generosity, for giving so much of you and adding meaning to my life.

Happy winter solstice (summer for those in the Southern Hemisphere) and happy holidays. 🙂