So, Why Is My Hair Now the Color of an Easter Egg?
I see now what happened here. I was burying my head in the sand over missing out on a few fantastic opportunities.
It wasn’t long before I realized the pity party had to end. So with my usually quirky way of coping, I rebelled. I took my head out of the sand and turned it into a bright beacon of self-expression.
Thank you MS, I love it. My hair is purple.
I am learning there is a kind of contract you must sign between yourself and multiple sclerosis. I say to myself every day, whatever I can do, I can do.
I go to bed with a plan in my head and then see what my body's reaction is to the alarm clock going off in the morning. I check in with MS, to see how it’s doing, then we come to an agreement as to how to approach the day.
MS Is Not All Bad
I have always been adventurous, yet highly analytical. I have been daring, but never without a strong sense of responsibility.
There is no right way of knowing how to deal with MS, but I've found positives while learning to cope with it all. Since my diagnosis, some of these traits and modes of being don’t fit my mold anymore. I’ve developed new gateways into thinking, coping and strategizing.
I hesitate a lot less, I am more expressive, I throw caution to the wind on things I may have felt self-conscious about in the past. I am more interested in the subtleties of life.
I like this side of me. I have the opportunity to learn how to become more authentic. I happily no longer have the luxury of taking things for granted.
MS to me, with all its awfulness, is also a permission slip of sorts. It is a permission slip to try on different ways of living, a different pace of being.
Before MS, everything just whizzed by at the speed of my career. Now, things whiz by at the speed of the bees and butterflies in my yard. I actually do stop and smell the roses.
Does MS Make Me Feel Like a Different Person?
If anything, I’d say MS has allowed me to live life more in the now and certainly with a deeper connection and drive for self-discovery. I’d say MS has made me more approachable, more mischievous and more curious about life than I have ever been.
I feel as though I am exactly the same person I have always been, but my compass has been turned inside out. Whereas before, I lived a very large and adventurous life, seeking out adventures around the physical globe in order to pull them in and ingest their teachings.
Now, the adventures come from inside. I look out to the world from deep within my spirit and venture out from the teachings within. I would not have had this new way of seeing the world had it not been for lousy MS.
As I sat in the salon chair, saying goodbye to my dark brown hair for the first time, I felt liberated. There are so many things I can no longer do it is practically maddening, yet I see that MS allows me to try new things. So I seek out new experiences and find ways to look at familiar things in entirely new ways.
