In Sickness and In Health

When my children hurt themselves, they come to me, point to the affected area and present themselves for their magic Mother's kiss which I willingly give. I kiss them sweetly and suddenly, they are better, returning to play and jovial mood. I kiss them better and it is as if it never happened. That is the beauty of youth, so a little a thing can turn their tears into laughter.

I was born with an incurable genetic disease, though I've never favoured the word disease, Osteogenesis Imperfecta, Type 1. It is more commonly known as Brittle Bones Disease. Essentially, my bones break easily and with little cause. I was much luckier than some with the condition. There are those confined to wheel chairs from birth, who cannot feel the slightest touch without falling to pain. Yet still, in my youth I had my fair share of pain. As I have grown older, some of those injuries though by all accounts healed, continue to keep me awake at night as they ache. I do not mend as easily as I once did and as my body has begun to fail me in other ways, I feel their sting more keenly.

The fatigue I first noticed when I was seventeen. I did not possess the energy of my peers. Sleep came unwelcome and sometimes for days it seemed I could barely rise. I thought it laziness. I would often sob as I shouted at myself in the mirror to get a grip and simply learn to fight it, but it remains a battle I am constantly embroiled in.

Then the dislocations started. My limbs seemed to have a mind of their own. Joint Hypermobility Disorder. Another incurable illness with no remedy but heat applied to the affected limb and rest, and rest was already my enemy.

After my children things escalated. I attempted to fight through it. I even managed for a time to get my stubborn body to cooperate beyond what I believed capable, alas, I found myself in dire straights. Pain keeping me awake at night and uncontrollable fatigue forcing me into sleep when I needed most to waken.

I knew I was ill. I knew something was irrevocably wrong with me but I found myself in relationships where this went unnoticed, and where it was simply seen as an unwillingness to perform as expected.

This puffy faced, red eyed, spectre became the norm. I walked as if a ghost in my own life, crying out for help to be met with scorn.

So; when I met a man who saw the illness, saw through the thinly veiled mask to the pain and the exhaustion, my natural extinct was to think him mad. What on earth could a man like him, want with an almost divorced mother of two who felt as though at times she could barely stand? As it happened, what he wanted was to be loved her.

His love did not cure me, if only such things were possible but it did bring me back to life.

I remembered that I was more than a mother, more than the sum of my illnesses, I was also a woman.

I had dreams and ambitions. I had a life beyond my children and my bed.

There are still days where it is almost impossible if not entirely impossible to manage the pain in my joints and the pain brought on by old wounds. There are still days when sleep is my only thought and there are still nights where it refuses to comes. But now, when cries ring out for help, he is there. No task it too large or too small that he will not lend aid.

I like to say, that he leaned into my life at exactly the right moment because that is how I found him; leaning against my garden wall, so at ease, as if he already lived there.

He is not perfect, but he is mine.