Moments to remember!

Going back to my post here about moments that make memories, and making the most of time with people, I am so glad I went to the pub to sing karaoke last night, despite actually feeling pretty awful!

When I first had M.E., back in 1993, one of the major problems contributing to my need to spend much of my time quietly in bed was a kind of painful over-sensitivity to everything. It's hard to explain if you haven't experienced it. It doesn't only crop up in M.E., many people with autism or neurological problems spend their whole life like it. Normal light is way too bright and hurts you eyes as if you were out in brilliant sunshine and needed sunglasses. Normal sound is either too loud, and jars your nerves, or too cacophonous, you can't properly separate what you need to hear from the background noise.. it's all coming in at once and full-on. Music sounds out of tune when it isn't. When you move it doesn't quite register right.. you feel off-balance, out of kilter. Food doesn't quite taste right and you wonder if it is off. Touch hurts you, even the clothes on your skin.

Thankfully, it mostly wore off over the years.. as if my brain had learned to adjust to these processing problems and compensate, but there would still be the odd day when light was just too bright or the world felt a bit "too much", particularly if I was poorly with something else on top of the M.E. However, just recently I have experienced two separate days where these problems got pretty full on again, and yesterday was one of them.

Add to that a worrying phone call from my foster daughter and some glitches in getting ready to go out and it would have been easy to back out on grounds of not being able to cope.. and indeed in the first few minutes after my friend V arrived with the two young ladies accompanying us out for the evening, I actually felt a sense of panic, just coping with the normal chatter and laughter and bustle of getting ready to leave for the pub. It was as if my mind and nervous system couldn't quite keep up with processing what people were saying to me or what was going on. The drive provided space, as it was just me and D in the van, whilst the two girls kazooed their way there in V's car.

I can't say it was the easiest of evenings for me. I was constantly worried I seemed like I was ignoring people and sometimes I had to sit with my eyes closed to reduce the input. But for all the world I would not have missed my two young friends singing with ever growing confidence... and particularly when they ran up to join David as he sang Shania Twain's "Man! I feel like a Woman!" and were giggling like mad at him! (another strike for eradication of gender specificity in karaoke...LOL)  If you don't get out there and live, whatever is going on with your body or mind, you miss this stuff, and it is gone forever.

Funnily enough, when I got up to sing myself, I found myself able to disappear into a little world of my own with the karaoke track and block the rest out, in a way I normally CAN'T, and felt I sang the better for it... go figure! It was like a blessed pause where I was able to concentrate again, only more clearly than ever, and there was just me and the song.

Wouldn't have missed that either..