What About Love? With a Disability, Can There be Love? (Part 1)

These are questions that I've asked myself time and time again since my diagnosis. Granted, the emotional state of love is subjective at best. After all, how can an emotion like love be quantified. And if you throw in a disability like Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's, or Fibromyalgia, any emotional connection could be an uncertainty.

When I was first diagnosed with MS in April 2011, I was still fully functional as far as my motor skills and musculature were concerned. I was also in a long distance relationship with a woman, a beautiful and intelligent woman, that was more sexual in nature than true love. While it was intense at times and I had deep feelings for her and her me, plus there had been plans for us to meet up sometime that summer, any deeper meaning to the relationship wasn't there. It was purely sexual and it fizzled after six months.

A couple of years later, I began dating a female friend I'd always had feelings for. And those feelings were reciprocated. For awhile things were good. Still, I was dealing with my own problems with my MS diagnosis - MS drug therapy, pain management, sleep deprivation, walking, driving - not to mention my emotional struggles I was having daily as I tried to come to terms with the enormous cost MS was going to have on my life as a whole.

It all boiled down to one Saturday evening where she was graduating from an IT class she had signed up for (one I had whole heartedly supported her through our final six months together). As much as I loved her and how proud I was of her accomplishments, I was in pain...a lot of pain. As for everyone in the auditorium, they knew nothing of my situation. But as my fellow MS'ers will attest, when that kind of pain hits it is an unbearable situation.

I'd made a complete ass of myself that night. I was standing in the lobby waiting for her and speaking with a group of people that had graduated with my girlfriend. When she showed up, we went to head towards the elevators to get to where we'd parked when someone mentioned that the elevators were shut down for the night. I lost my composure, cursing loudly and slamming my walker against the floor in anger, basically shocking the people around me (as well as my girlfriend) with my behavior.

We ultimately had to leave through a different exit, but my behavior had put a damper on the evening. I can't even blame the pain I was in, because it was only a trigger for my temper. The fault was entirely my own: bad planning on my part, making sure I had plenty of pain medication before the evening began, and breaking a promise that I had made about losing my temper when I couldn't control situations surrounding me that were beyond my control anyways.

Our time together ended largely due to the fact that I hadn't yet learned that I couldn't completely control things. I hadn't really learned how to deal with the way MS was affecting not only how my body was declining physically, but mentally as well. I wasn't prepared for the ways others would be affected by my attitude(s) concerning the disease that was ravaging not only my body but my mind as well.

[Part 2 - How I Turned the Corner: Learning That Love is a Two-Sided Coin]