Sometimes I feel like a flake. The crappy part about this is that flakiness is one of my biggest pet peeves. I cannot stand flakey people! I hate when people bail on plans or lack planning skills in general. I have unfortunately become one of those people. It seems like I never really know how I'm going to feel from day to day; be it my level of energy, brain fog, headaches...and the list goes on. When I think about how disappointed I become with people like me, it really sucks. I have this major complex about being the one who disappoints. Hypocrite that I am, I have been perpetually disappointed with people lately. I think it's true that what we can't stand in others is really just what we hate most about ourselves.

So I'm feeling the MS "flake factor" trickle over into every aspect of my life. It seems like the time in between feeling like a steaming pile of poop, is just not enough to make everything I want to happen, happen. Perhaps the geniuses who have told me that it's almost always Type A personalities who get MS are right? Somehow I find this doubtful, but perhaps I am too anal for my own good. It's like I have this ever growing list of things going in my head that I want to do not only for myself, but for other people. Unfortunately I feel like it's effing baby steps all the way, and by the end of the day I've barely made a dent in my list of things to do. Why is it that shit is just so overwhelming lately?! Have I always been like this, or am I letting MS make me feel like I can't accomplish everything that use to seem so easy for me?

On the social side of the "flake factor" I feel like I'm not exactly being the friend that I want my friends to be. One of the things that I have found so important for me is just feeling like my friends honest to god, give a shit about how I'm feeling or what's going on with me. The awful part about this, is that I do a terrible job lately of making sure people know how much I actually "give a shit" what's happening in their lives. I guess it's good to remember that I'm not the only person who has had shit hit the fan in the last year, in fact I don't know a single person who isn't dealing with some major life malfunction these days. Either way, I realize that social crap is a pretty important part of our "being" and it's something I definitely need to work on. 

The hilarity to all of this is in about five minutes, I might have myself convinced that I am conquering the world. I just wish these moments of self assured victory weren't so fleeting. 

Warning: Really bad metaphor to follow. Control your vomit reflexes please.

So I had something happen to me last night that changed my views on things a bit. In order to help talk about this in the vaguest terms possible I'm going to use a giant lame-o metaphor. Its gonna be exciting.

I often talk about cards. What ones we get dealt, and when to play them, and as it turns out I'm a so-so poker player but I'm not really one to be giving advice about poker. But we all get dealt a hand in life. Some of the cards are shitty. We have MS cards, which we'll call a pair of 2s because that makes for a stupid poker hand...but at least its a pair. Its a constant, its something to count on in one way or another. Well lets say you're playing 5 card poker and you get a bunch of other off suit cards that don't help you do anything. Its a shitty hand, and that shitty hand will dictate the way you play your game in life. And I have been pissed about the hand that I got dealt for a long time.

And even when I drew 3 new cards I always expected shitty ones because that's what I was used to having. Deuces and a bunch of other shitty cards, no matter who was dealing. So here I am stuck with this shitty hand bound to lose.

BUT...last night something happened. Someone told me something, that I never considered. What if...a new game starts. What if periodically we get dealt a new hand? Maybe we will always have a pair of 2s but the other cards could all change. Maybe I get dealt 3 Aces after that. Just because you got bad cards before, doesn't always mean you will continue to do so.

And I don't understand why I never got this before, and why making lemonade out of lemons never crossed my mind. Sometimes we need to really start over, press the reset. We know we have MS, maybethat's our one guarantee. But nothing else is guaranteed to do well... or to fail. Not everything will suck because you had to fold your first poker hand at life. Maybe you need to fold your cards, think of it as a necessary loss, and get new freakin' cards. There are a ton of other winning hands available with a pair of twos, that maybe you're missing out on because you're not ready to fold. I gotta tell you...I learned. Fold the bad cards. Stop bluffing your way through things. Let go of the bad cards...Get a new hand.

And if you know nothing about cards...here's the cliffsnotes: Hate, Anger, and fear are all baggage. Let it go before you risk losing something worth keeping. Just because things have been bad for you 4 out of 5 times...that still leaves 1. It doesn't mean everything will always be bad.

Hey...I never claimed to know it all, (or be any good at metaphors), and maybe some of you out there already got this advice and took it before. But until someone broke it down for me, I couldn't see how to move on from the past.

Not only am I getting new cards...I'm buying a whole new effing deck. One of the nice ones, that are all slippery and have holes in the center and have a nice wooden engraved case with my name on it.

As I was preparing my delicious carrot/apple/"green shit" drink this morning, and chugging it down as quickly as I could, lest I actually taste the "green shit", I had to laugh at myself. There is this absurd lack of balance I have between "things that are good for me" and "things that are bad for me". Literally an hour earlier I had jumped out of bed, thrown on some clothes, and driven down to the market to get some cigarettes. Yes, I was out of cigarettes, and yes, this is the first thing I do when I wake up. I smoke. How in the hell did I start smoking, and why you might ask? Well, I was a late bloomer. I didn't start smoking when I was like, fifteen, because that's what the "cool" kids were doing. I was the party pooper still, at twenty, who hung out inside shaking her head in disgust, while everyone else was outside, "socially smoking".   

  So how did I go from one of those people who made a nasty comment every time I had to breathe in someone else's second hand smoke, or try to lecture others on the harms of smoking, to being a full fledged smoker by the time I was 21? Hells bells. This still comes as a surprise to me. In fact this evening I went for one of my "natural" American Spirits and looked down at the cigarette between my hand, feeling utterly disgusted with myself, "this isn't me". Unfortunately, it is me. I am a smoker. I am ashamed to admit it, and this shame is now compounded by the fact that I have MS. I have a few close friends who also smoke, but other than this, I am a lone wolf. My boyfriend doesn't smoke, most of my friends do not smoke, and nobody in my immediate family smokes. I guess I had some sort of shit fit in my mid-twentieth year, and decided that the "stress" in my life would be lessened if I smoked a clove. Turns out I enjoyed it. I kept on smoking the cloves, and eventually got my shit together enough to switch over to regular cigarettes, since these at least didn't have fiberglass particles in them, or do they? Hmmm. Research question...

    Fast forward about a year and here come birth of my random health issues. I knew something wasn't quite right with my body, but I wasn't sure what was happening. I even had to quit work for a few months just to try and get a little of my health back. I was quitting my job for awhile, because I felt like such shit, and still, I kept up with the cancer sticks. Well, the time off work helped, and I slowly began emerging from the dark pit that was my 21st year. I came home to Oregon from a stay with my dad in California, feeling pretty refreshed, and ready to get back to life. I met my boyfriend Andy shortly after, and I swore to myself that this would be what would make me quit smoking. He wasn't a smoker, so how on earth could I kiss him?! Well, this too didn't prove to be enough of a motivator.  

   Fast forward yet again, to me, being 27, diagnosed with MS, and three months later, still smoking. I know there are a lot of folks out there puffing away on their cigarettes, some feeling badly about it, some more than happy to admit they "enjoy every cigarette" all the while living with chronic illness like MS. Is it wrong that when I think of someone, especially someone in their forties or fifties, living with MS and still smoking, I am simultaneously grossed out and disappointed in them? I suppose I can answer that one myself. Yeah. It's totally wrong. How the hell am I any different? Denial perhaps. Obviously I have some work to do.