[ 5 Years ] How do you define yourself?

I enjoy looking back at my Facebook memories. Well at first it's kind of funny, looking at my 16/17 year old self. What I found important and what I dedicated my time into.

Sports and friends

With those two things also came how I defined myself or identified myself. 

I was an athlete and a friend. 

Not to a lot of people, but a few good friends. We had tons of fun together, from sports trips, playing down by the river, going out late for slurpees, playing dress up, playing outside. Those years I never had to care about anything, food, money, transportation, education, it was all given to me without much ask.

So much of it taken for granted I've those years, especially my health.

Today marks 5 years of being diagnosed with MS. I find myself searching for my identity.  

I feel like there are at least 2 main ways we identify ourselves.
1. Either by something we are really good at and/or
2. something we spend the most time doing.

Reading different articles online I can see, people define themselves as their job, "I am a carpenter." It's what I do, my job and my life.
Or as a parent, "I am a mother" it's what they spend 98% of their time doing.
Therefore that is how they define themselves.

I don't think those are bad ways of defining ourselves, but there is more to you than just that.

I know I can say this out loud but that doesn't mean that I think that way. I 100% define myself as someone who has MS. I view it as apart of me, it's who I am not. I'm a 25 y/o who has MS. There are many days that I believe it's the only quality that defines who I am I use it all the time when I talk about myself.
I think that if someone doesn't know I have MS they don't know who I am. Which party makes sense, cause a lot of the reasons I do things in life is because of the disease. Activities, work, memory, interactions with people. I am constantly working and living around this disease.

So, I must ask myself why shouldn't I be defined by it? 

A.  It's not super healthy. As much as I want to believe it, I am not my disease. And there is so much more to me than it.

B. It can't be an excuse all the time. Well, maybe it can be, but it probably shouldn't make me stay away from particular things. Eg. Working full time, playing sports, getting more education, hanging out with friends or family. I found that over the past few years I feel like I talk about my MS a lot. (Granted, if you get a puppy, that's what you always talk about too, right?) It's a go to, it's something that is such a huge part of my life, it impacts everything.

C. I see myself as handicapped. I know I'm not on the same playing field as most people. I know how much I struggle to keep up with other people in life, energy wise, capabilities in life, etc.


Which also leads me to think that even my acquaintances see me as handicapped. I'm terrified that new people I meet or work with are going to see me as handicapped.

Or someone who can't keep up, can't perform as good as, think as fast, as, be as capable as someone who doesn't have MS.

D. I spend a lot of time wanting to prove people wrong when they talk about my MS. Not that they mean to, but some people become concerned about what I should or shouldn't be doing, or if I've remembered everything as I'm heading out the door.

I desperately want them to be wrong. 

I am driven on occasion to prove people in my life wrong.
(Other days I am content and I will just blame it on my MS)

What am I going to do about it? 

Tune into my next blog post when I have figured it out! ;)