Multiple Sclerosis

A poem of sorts

I exist. I work. I clean. I socialize. I create.

But the cleaning is painful and exhausting and gets done oh so slowly or not at all.

The socializing is strained and exhausting but I need it all the same. I try to plan ahead, I don’t want to cancel, and then I do, not always, but often, too often.

I create in my head, I write lists, I draw diagrams, I purchase supplies. I think about the lofty plans I’ve made for myself, the high expectations I have for my creations, I get overwhelmed, I sit, I write this instead.

Just get started I think, and eventually I do, eventually I will, but slowly because the creating is painful and exhausting like the cleaning. I like the creating more, the cleaning needs done more than the creating, or does it?

There’s never enough time for creating because I work and I clean and the working is painful and exhausting too, in a different way, a soul sucking way, where every ounce of me that could be put into socializing or cleaning or creating is put into working instead because I need money so that I can have a place to clean, so that I can go places to socialize, so that I can have materials to create with.

And so it continues. I exist, so I create, so I clean, so I socialize, so I work. And within it all I find the calm, the peace, the joy, and slowly but surely I accept the pained, tired me and try to believe that the creating will come at its own, slow pace.