Photography by Denise Beckwith
‘Every illness has it beginning. Like every beginning has it´s start. 4 years ago, it was in July 2013, I was writing at home, a House work, about people and how they treat each other at the working place. So at least I wanted to have a compensation. I did a lot of sports and visited a friend of mine, when I started to feel dizzy, in my head. Later on, at home I had double images, everywhere I looked around. It was scaring me and it was confusing. So i decided, because it was a Friday afternoon, to stay home, the whole weekend, all by myself. I wanted to go to the ophthalmologist, right on Monday. I still had the double images and couldn’t hardly find my way to the train station. The people around were not understanding my situation. I heard this one lady saying, look at this woman, it is in the morning and she is already drunk. I didn’t had force. When I was at the doctor, I collapsed right away, I couldn’t talk anymore, I couldn’t move, I lost all of my body control. And in my mind, I was getting used to the thought „I am going to die“. I heard the doctor asking questions, but i wasn’t responsive. Then I came into hospital, three weeks, I was on the Neurological station, I still had this blurred vision. After almost 2 weeks they told me, that I have multiple sclerosis. I couldn’t realize what that means. For my life, because it gives you an uncertain future and it can get worse rapidly. One big thing about the illness is, the anxiety, deep down buried in every inch of my body. The anxiety, that I can loose everything that I love about life and in my life. On one single day. The medicaments that I take, make me dependent to a system and to side effects, that are hard to explain. The case that one oft he side effect could be Creutzfeld and Jakob or other viral diseases, is never locked out. When I wanted to stop taking the medicament, I went to a doctor and she said to me, after I told her, she looked at my MRT pictures and said: Look at this, it looks so bad, you have to take a much more concentrated medicine, than now. Soon. I felt the anxiety, starting in my brain through my whole spinal column. The whole acceptance, that I had builded up so far, was damaged, with one single sentences, because of a faulty doctor and a faulty system. This is now almost half a year ago.
My illness is unpredictable and fury. I am fighting every single day, when I wake up, to enjoy every single moment and to live as regular, as every body else. Still I don’t want to talk to much about this. Cause even when the people don’t want to put you in a drawer, they do. It is an Experience, that, after they know, they don’t take you as serious anymore. And I just want to forget that I have multiple sclerosis, an uncertain future. My friends help me to accept myself, but a lot of people could make it worse, because they know your weakness. Or, they turn your strength of high sensibility into a weakness. Emotions are weakness.
I have days, when I am closely about giving up. Every Hope that I have is gone. The Circumstances in this world, don’t make me feel better. I want good News. It feels, like I am caught in chains, like I am tied up. I have to accept, that the circumstances are a part of my life now and that it is never as it was before, without this addiction. I have this chains. But I have days, where I am the happiest woman ever, because, I am loving the love of my life, my fiancé. I can enjoy the beauty of nature. In all Experiences I have made, I must say that love, „Mother Nature“ and peace is best medicine ever.’
- M. Peace. S. 2017