jackpot...

i found it! finally i came up with the right mix of terms to get google to find my blog! here was the string: emily blog brain tumor multiple sclerosis MS

i feel a little exposed, but it's okay, really. i've decided to do one of the national MS society 150-mile fundraising bike rides. and as a result, i've gotten a little more comfortable with outing myself with the MS. it isn't like it's something i'm ashamed of or that is incriminating. but it is something private and personal and it's a gigantic huge deal for me and so i have been somewhat selective with the people that i've told. it is, for better or worse, part of my life, part of who i am, part of what will influence every decision i make. it is only fitting that the people in my world know.

god, so much has changed since i last posted. stean and i aren't together anymore. i've moved into a new apartment, just me and milo. i'm almost finished with my first year of law school... the stean situation is so complicated. i don't even know what to write about it, other than to say that the paths of our lives stopped running parallel. i love him, i'll always have a hell of a lot of good feelings about him -- he's too much a part of the last three years of my life for me to deny that i'll probably always care about him deeply. but it wasn't right and neither of us was happy, even though i don't think he'd admit to that in the same way that i have. he says i've changed, that i'm not the same person he fell in love with. and he's right--i'm not that same person. my life was completely different when he fell in love with me. and i hoped that while i was changing, he was changing with me, but as things have turned out, the way i changed wasn't the way he changed and we fell apart. it's amazing to me that any relationship makes it for the long haul--it's such a constant series of conscious choices to give and take and let go and hold on. relationships are miracles. and it wasn't time for my miracle yet. someday...

my main reason for writing tonight is to post something that is somewhat positive, now that i know that this little blog is googleable. because the next couple of posts are kinda boring and negative.

so here's to something positive...

earlier today i watched a blind woman cross a street and felt really really blessed to be able to see, that today i have my sight. nothing is guaranteed for tomorrow--i've got no money, i'm worried about my finals, i'm having zero luck with boys--but today, i have my sight and i can walk and run and laugh and i trust that all of the things that could possible turn bad will eventually turn good again. i figure that's pretty positive. that's a lot, actually. the weather has been beautiful lately, i've been listening to really good music, i discovered that my landlords have pottery wheels and a kiln in the basement! today, right now, i'm doing just fine.

milestones...

so, the one year mark passed last week. approximately one year before the hour that i was delivering my oral arguments for the brief i've slaved over for weeks for my legal writing class, i woke up in an emergency room after losing consciousness somewhere near 21st and south streets in philadelphia.

one year. dr. p had told me that the likelihood was great that i would have another episode/relapse/exacerbation within the first year of diagnosis, but none happened. at least, nothing serious enough to qualify as an episode/relapse/exacerbation.

but so much else has happened. so many things have changed.

in keeping with the trend of having something really life-alterning happen in the late winter/early spring of each year (2003 being losing my job, 2004 being the brain mess), stean and i have parted ways. now i live by myself in a great little apartment -- just me and milo. my space, my stuff, my order. it feels good, but it is certainly not without its sadness.