Life is for living, so let me live it…

Fed up.

Flippin' fed up.

Flippin' fed up and not very happy about it.

My life used to be fun and interesting and exciting and wonderful but now it is suddenly so dull and boring and I hate it.

So what, I hear you ask, has changed? What's happened? My MS, that's what happened. Thanks to a massive pressure sore that got infected and put me in hospital on intravenous drugs eighteen months ago I am now restricted to spending most of my time in bed, in my living room, instead of going out, doing stuff and having a life so the pressure sore doesn't come back. I get to get up and go out occasionally but not every day like I used to. Just a few short hours of freedom every month and then back to my padded prison of pillows, sheets and duvet. Not so bad when it's cold and miserable outside in the winter but oh so dull in the summer when it's sunny and hot and I can hear the world happening outside, without me. I used to work full-time, had an active social life, got to go places and meet up with friends and do stuff all the time and have a real life and now I can't. I used to moan about the weather, the traffic, my job, the crowded shops and streets, public transport delays, the fact there was never anything on at the cinema that I wanted to see. But no longer. My world has shrunk in size to become little more than a rectangular box with a small, hexagonal bump on one side. My living room, with a bay window where my bed is situated overlooking the outside world, and a door to the rest of the house that I only get to go through rarely. I get to interact with real life through my keyboard, through my television, through social media, through occasional phone conversations with friends and family and visits from my carers every morning and evening and that's it.

Yesterday I had such a lovely day. I got up, was helped to dress, hoisted out of my bed and put into my wheelchair and then I went out into the world with my older child. Not that we did anything earth-shattering or exceptional, we just went to the lovely Sunday farmers' market near our home and wandered around. We looked at various stalls selling cakes and fruit and veg and meat and ethnic fast food, sampled lots of different cheeses and bought a few, picked over bits of costume jewellry and books and pictures and items in boxes at the brick-a-brack stalls, ummed and ahhed over some small antiques and old LPs and black and white postcards from a bygone era and then went for a coffee and a snack at a local cafe where we got to meet up with my younger daughter. I interacted with strangers, got to meet one of my child's friends who happened to be there too, felt the sun on my face, felt the breeze in my hair and got involved, just for once, with so-called normal life. Nothing amazing but, for me, very special and not 'normal' at all. I was getting to do something that, not so long ago, I got to do most weeks and something that the majority of people get to do whenever they feel like it. And, I didn't realise quite how special it was until I didn't get to do it any more. Well, not every week anyway.

Why is it that none of us seem to understand what we've got until we don't have it any more? I know that it's up to me to make something out of my new life but, if I could do it all again, I would smile at passers-by, chatter with some of the others waiting at the bus-stop, take more pride in my environment and just relish, enjoy and be thankful for my life and my environment. If I could go back and do it all again I would make sure I paid far more attention to the seemingly small things that make life so joyous and wonderful. And I would love it and be thankful for it far more than I ever was before.

Life is for living and enjoying and relishing so go out and live it and enjoy it and relish it just in case it changes when you least expect it and you find yourself fed up and watching others having fun when you can