A mixtape for multiple sclerosis

A mixtape for multiple sclerosis

Wednesday, 4 October 2017

Fall in love with me

It’s our tenth wedding anniversary this week.

I know, I know, we don’t look old enough.

But yes, ten years.

A quick google tells me that the traditional gift for ten years is tin. Not the most glamorous of anniversary offerings, but there we are.

Although if I think about properly, tin actually resonates rather well with my hubby. (Bear with me on this one...)

When we first got together we had been great friends for five years. But we’d dated for just six months when I was hit with my first relapse.

Hospitalised, newly diagnosed, over-thinking, I was worried about my future and about that of my then boyfriend.

How could I expect him to take on someone who, for all we knew, could become very ill very quickly? How could I ask him to take a chance on a future with someone whose present had suddenly been thrown into such turmoil?

As friends we were rock solid, but as partners we were only just starting.

I remember saying he could leave, that he didn’t have to stay and deal with an uncertain future.

But anyone who knows my husband knows that leaving would never be an option. That staying and facing it as a team would be the only road he would choose.

I hope he knows quite how much that early decision means to me.

That his love, support, trust and belief have been central to the way I am able to cope.That his decision has got me through the last 10 years and will lead us into the next.

Which brings me very neatly to the answer of why tin resonates so well.

In the film adaptation of L Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the tin man searches for a heart, only to realise he’d actually had one all along.

After all, as the great and powerful Oz puts it: “A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.”

And he is loved. Very much.


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