A True friend's Truth

I now find myself trying to review my situation and decide the path i need to take, whilst weighing up impending redundancy and the possibility of ill health retirement .

So i need reflect on how I have been struggling for the last 12+ years with my health conditions and how they have affected me . Its time for a wake up call! why the alarm hasnt gone off way before now is a shocking mystery!

Whilst wading my way through the Disability living allowance form, trying to remember all the thousand of adjstments i have made over the years to try and cope with day to day activities and how my disabilities affect all areas of my life- I struggled .

I stuggled- not only to remember what i have intergrated into my life as a way of coping, but also what i have had to give up totally in the way of leisure activitiesand the impact on my quality of life.

Thousand of both huge and tiny adjustments. But also with the emotions that are raised whilst filling in this monstrous beaurocratic form that makes war and peace look like a beano comic.

I have tried several times over the years to fill in this form, each time not completing it. It was just too hard for me to reflect on the effects of my health had on my life.

May be had i managed to fill it in the realisation of the impact would have been fully realised by me and i would have had my wakeup call far earlier, and who knows maybe i would have found that my strong work ethic would have been touched into reality and i would have taken a different path by now.

But there is no point in reflecting on what ifs.. im here now .

I will return and write a more positive and encouraging guide to tackling the DLA monster, when I have managed it- I promise!

As a part of my process i decided to take a difficult step for me, to ask a very dear friend who has known me before and throughout my stuggles with ill health to help me reflect.

To give me her truth of how she has seen what i have been through.

As a way of helping me face up to things and to put it all into perspective, push me through denial i guess. And empower me to make to take the diection that would be best for me.

"Friends are kisses blown to us by angels"

This is what she wrote :

I have grown to know and love you since we were 17/18.

We seem to have been bonded together by a mutually deep emotional, intellectual, spiritual, philosophical understanding of life (as well as Annie Lennox of course before either of us really truly understood what sexuality was even!)

From our shared experiences and time spent over twenty years, particularly the weekly hours together after your therapy sessions after your back first went at work, I feel hopeful to give reflection to you which may help support you on this leg of your life journey. Of course… let’s talk if anything is not understood or just needs clarity.

You have always sought the depths of the human situation and given particular attention to its detail. I have always tried to reflect my truth (albeit from my own biases and love for you as a friend) and offer a fair and real mirror in which you can trust and share your self / feelings in order for us to try to excavate any issues or worries which have challenged any of your predispositions.

The main predisposition I speak of, as I see it, has generally been of you carrying a damaged self worth and an equivalent fear for sharing safely your true feelings in a hard edged masculine world.

This damaged self worth is a big part of why I love and respect you. I believe it has particularly equipped you with an earnest strength and drive to work, play and relate to the world around you with nothing but the highest of integrity. A challenge for you has been to work out how to do that at your own pace in a world that spins much faster than you with nowhere near the attention to detail or care to even stop and see it.

I believe your essential need to thoroughly research and understand something, before you offer an intelligent appraisal of fact, offer your opinion or make a decision, has been driven by your integrity and need / search for safety. It is in a way your science and consequently why you are good at your science and hence your chosen occupation!

As far as your career/back is concerned… I have watched you struggle to work out how to maintain your earnest, committed, conscientious approach to your employers (beyond the stretch or care of most people) with a confusing, debilitating, intermittent but relentless back pain, the origins of which have been rudely denied you and the solution to which seems to have flummoxed most medical practitioners.

This constant tightrope walking has seriously affected and diminished your physical standard of living (from not being able to do your gardening or walk your dog or learn to drive or sit for too long or stand up straight or move let alone the need to at times pee in a potty) and subsequently your emotional responses to such restrictions (shock, upset, confusion, acceptance and accommodation of fact let alone the fact that you have never truly been able to switch your mind off from it – it has been a constant for 15 or so years and it looks possible to be a constant for the rest of your life. The added MS diagnosis is I would imagine most unlikely to help the situation).

Despite juggling the stark reality of the physical and emotional compromise to your life with a multitude of brain fogging drugs, pain killers and physicians, you have somehow managed to keep your job, maintain your integrity to it and your employers and I’ve not doubt pulled off an excellent standard of work that you yourself have been satisfied with!
At every turn it seems to me that you have tried your utmost to stay financially independent though your back has seriously jeopardized this wish.

You have offered your work place realistic suggestions and respectful professional conduct in order to maintain your job, your self esteem and their needs of you as an employee as well as the human right to have a roof over your head (reduced hours, practical measures and changes for H&S in the work place, clear communication of your needs following all their stipulations and regulations when in the first instance of your back going they did not follow them themselves! – procedure was neglected)
You pioneered a new role when your original position for which you were trained became too untenable – with the height of the laboratory surfaces and the pain you were suffering, with the need to constantly try to move in order not to aggravate the pain or come to the point that you need to leave work early.

Though I understand also that it’s always been tricky to know what would be good for your back and what wouldn’t – it’s been so unpleasantly unpredictable. After a certain amount of time you generally have worked out what’s manageable in order to offer you at least a certain quality of life that you can’t compromise further on (I would wager that most people would have drawn their line way before you’ve been able to state yours) Your confidence in your deductions has always been undermined by a fear of something. It seems to me that you have always put your commitment to your work as the priority over the consequence to your back. You would go to work, struggle through knowing that you would probably be laid up the next day – but that’s not so bad coz it’s a day where you don’t have to be in at work! Your assumed position has always seemed to be a compromise to your free time.

You have stretched yourself so far to try to accommodate the unfortunate situation that the turn of phrase ‘break one’s back’ certainly and eerily springs to mind.

At some point on this whole journey you have reached the need to offer the earnest, committed and conscientious approach you have shown to your work - to your self, your back and your health. The ultimate challenge I’m guessing now might be to find trust and strength in your own feelings on the matter and assert what’s best for you when all those around you are pushing their own agenda whilst talking from an unemotional standpoint. A stand point which they take for granted because they can run upstairs, they can make love when they like and in whatever position they like, they can play sport, they can act without a constant compromise of movement.

As I always have, I urge you to muster the energy you can to get what you need here, what your body needs, to ask for what in your heart feels like a fair outcome to your years of pain and mental anguish. You are entitled to ask for what is best and fair for the management of your continued back issues and I believe you have researched the issue thoroughly by now to know what would be that ‘best’ outcome. I’m not suggesting you in any way ‘give up’ anything. In fact I think you may be pleasantly surprised that ‘letting go’ of your current idea of what work is will only lead to big, better and beautiful doors opening up for you. You have held the stress of the struggle for years. I can imagine your body giving a huge sigh of relief in the knowledge that it may be given the time to do what it needs rather than holding itself together in order to fulfill what everyone else demands of it.

You have secured a roof over your head.
You have a gorgeous loving caring partner and stable relationship.
You have an amazingly creative and spiritual streak just waiting around the corner to be given the time, energy and focus it rightfully deserves.I send you my love and strength for the best outcome you see, feel and deduce ‘fit’ having done your thorough research, lived with the experience of a continual unnerving back pain for so long and borne all the intricacy of personal attention to detail in mind. I trust your judgement. You are worth it. I urge and support you to be unafraid in asking / telling others what you need.

For such precious friendship I am truely blessed.

The alarm is now deafening.. Namaste and thankyou x

"A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails"