Feel Freda Talk

Good morning, lovelies!

For those of you that listened to my first podcast episode – first of all, THANK YOU!!! And secondly, you now know about the most important key moments that played a part in making me the woman I am today. With that being said, I wanted to further touch upon some of those moments.

I first want to talk about living with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) because it has consistently been a tough pill to swallow. I will write another post about all the symptoms I’ve experienced since the start of my journey with the diagnosis, which started two years prior to the actual diagnosis date.

My dealing with this diagnosis has continually been a roller coaster of emotions for a few reasons. I’m so young, I was entirely too young to be diagnosed with MS at all, I had a rocky road with my trust in doctors for a long time, and I’m held back in certain ways from doing things I’d like to do – there are times I physically cannot get out of bed, or can’t enjoy a walk on the beach if the temperature is too high. I am extremely sensitive to heat, so if it gets too hot – like this entire summer has been – I’m unable to be outside for extended periods of time. I’ve experienced heat exhaustion once so far this summer because of it. When I can’t get out of bed, it could be a few different things that require me to stay in bed. It could be that I’m just physically exhausted or maybe my whole body hurts. It could be that my head is pounding or I can’t open my eyes. It’s like a game of roulette every morning because I never know if or when it’ll happen again.

I also had a hard time trusting the doctors during this entire thing. It took them TWO YEARS to put all the pieces together and diagnose me with MS and I think part of the reason it took so long was because of my age. My symptoms didn’t seem to add up to one conclusive thing because they don’t seem to make sense. I saw a bunch of specialists because I was told it was a bunch of individual issues that I was experiencing, even though it was one issue, one disease, that was responsible for everything.

I also have days where I think “there is absolutely no way I have MS, look at what I can do!” and then proceed to go weeks without any limitations. Then I have days where I can’t walk properly because of my leg issue or I can’t go outside because I immediately feel like I’ll faint. I struggle with that, too. I have days where I say “this disease doesn’t define who I am”, but then I also have days where I say “this disease is the reason I always feel like shit and can’t do things I want to do”. So, even though it’s been 6 years since I was diagnosed, I still struggle with it sometimes.

Loss can look different for everyone, but the loss I want to follow up on is the loss of my grandmother and the loss of my family unit (parents’ divorce) because they both happened when I was young.

I was 12 when my grandmother passed away and I remember like it was yesterday being woken up by my sobbing mother to tell me Nana had passed. I cried for months, and that isn’t an exaggeration. It sent me into a deep, downward spiral of depression, and I didn’t know how I could go on without her. Loss for me looked like depression, not eating, losing weight, sleeping 18 hours everyday, never leaving my room, and barely getting through the school days I was forced into going to. My parents tried to make me see a therapist, but she was old and weird and smelled bad, so I only went once and refused to return. Then one day, I woke up and things weren’t SO bad, but they also weren’t the same.

I used to love Christmas because it was Nana’s holiday. She would decorate the house and have all of us over for Christmas to unwrap gifts and have this big dinner and that was my favorite. When she passed, I hated Christmas. I wanted nothing to do with Christmas up until recently. It was only when I moved out of my mom’s place that I started to enjoy Christmas again.

Not long after she passed, I was told my parents were getting divorced. That was another large loss in my life that I couldn’t seem to understand – and sometimes still don’t – that led to lots of moving around and lots of change. I was only 14 when my parents got divorced, but my younger brother was only eight. I can’t even begin to imagine what that must’ve been like for him BUT he turned out to be an amazing guy and I’m very proud of him.

The loss of my family unit was very difficult to experience. It meant two different homes my brother and I would be carted off to, it meant sharing a bedroom with him when we would stay with my dad, and it meant “steps” – step-mom, step-brothers, step-dad, step-sisters. I didn’t want any “steps” when I was 14, and I’m sure my brother didn’t either. It’s funny – it feels like a lifetime ago.

In the end, loss doesn’t always have to be viewed as a bad thing. Yes, it was terrible when Nana passed away, but she’s no longer suffering like she had been. Yes, it was awful when my parents got divorced, but now we’re all able to laugh and have fun together, even though my parents aren’t together. I’m getting to learn who my parents really are, especially as I’m getting older.

In the end, I’ve learned that dealing with an unforeseen diagnosis and loss of any kind can hurt really badly, but it doesn’t have to hurt forever. Allow yourself to feel your emotions when they come to you, but to dwell on them is doing yourself a disservice.

Until next time. Talk soon, xoxo.