The great jihad

It came to me today, that my struggle with the M.S. symptoms/remedies/physicality... is with none of these.

I'm not on any of the nasty Western drugs. My herbal formulas taste funny at worst, and other than that have no side effects. My acupuncturist hurts when he pokes certain points; when the needles come out, the pain (both of the needles and, often, something afoul with the soul that the needles are trying to address) goes away immediately.

I've adapted (physically, at least) to the not-walking-so-good. Yeah, I can't stand up behind the stove/sink/whatever in the kitchen like I used to; I have to step in and out of the shower very carefully; I have to go out of my way, sometimes a long way, to avoid stairs, because I kinda can deal with them but my walker definitely can't. All these are inconveniences. Annoyances.

Having no energy. No creativity. No ability to play the organ; to stand up while holding (even while pretending to hold) a bow; to stand behind a xylophone or timpani. Those mess with the expression of my self... my soul. And those... really, really, suck.

But I find that the greatest struggle is not with the external effects, but with the internal effects. I'm not fully engaging with my self, especially with how I truly feel about the external "annoyances," because those are the tip of the iceberg that runs very, very deep within me.

As the saying goes, the great jihad... is the internal jihad.

A lovely blog site I just discovered, Tiny Buddha, poses a beautiful, powerful question. Which I can't answer.

And I want to. As this question asks, have I been lying to myself? About how I feel about the M.S. experience... well, I guess--I've been avoiding the question, strenuously not answering the question, because merely facing the answer (much less proclaiming it) is surprisingly, very surprisingly, difficult. And is it time to start creating happiness? [Insert favorite expletive here] YES!

But that can't happen until the avoidance, the denial, the lying, stops.

Of all the things the M.S. road demands of me... that is the hardest.