Art Therapy

I keep hearing about art therapy and was going to try a class or something, but my schedule just didn't let me. So, I decided to do my own art therapy. I had the idea that I would paint something that represented MS to me. Now, keep in mind that I don't paint normally. My son was always the painter in the family, even though he hasn't really painted in years; he's into writing now. I decided I would take out his easel and paints and stuff he wasn't using (including blank canvases that just happened to be lying around) and just give it a whirl. I painted a brain and spinal cord and was going to put different things on them to indicate MS. I messed up the first try and did another one. However, I looked back on the first one and thought it looked like a MesS...just the thing, right? I went back to that and decided it would become the representation of the disease that was inside me before I knew anything about it.

 Then the second one would be more structured, more detailed. It would represent my understanding of MS now. That one I would metaphorically treat...I took different colored crayons and colored over the different aspects, each color representing a different medication or treatment. By this time I was having a blast.

HIDDEN

After all that was done, I painted myself over these images...myself from an old photo from before my diagnosis over the messy, misunderstood painting (I named that one HIDDEN), and myself now over the organized, treated painting (I named it CONTROLLED). I am very proud of myself for how they turned out. Again, I'm no painter, but this was a lot of fun and very fulfilling.

CONTROLLED

To Work or Not to Work...

     ...that is the question...sometimes.

The more times I need to call in tired, the more times I feel sick or have headaches, and the more summer days knock me down, the more I wonder how much longer I can continue to work full time. I'm not mentally at the point of investigating permanent or partial disability because knowing I will be giving up part of my income makes me uneasy. After all, I have become accustomed to a certain lifestyle. You know, the little things in life that are hard to give up...things like a consistent roof over my head, regular meals...you know little things like that.