Will

ALS (and,  I imagine any other debilitating terminal disease)  comes with a flood of emotions,  most of them bad. I already discussed envy at some length here. Another frequent one I deal with regularly is hate;  hate of ALS and what it's doing to my body. Physical activity was something I particularly enjoyed, pushing my limits, doing things that many people thought was kind of nuts. I took good care of my body and it's quite difficult to deal with,  emotionally, the state it's in now. That I hate what's happening to me is pretty much inevitable. Emotions often are predictable, especially when you know something about the person. Less predictable are how people react to what they are feeling because the will can become involved. You can't help feeling the way you feel, but you have a choice with how you react to it.

A fairly convincing argument could be made that the ability to choose how we react to emotions is the key factor in what makes us human. It's not easy to be sure, the animal part of your brain pulls you strongly with emotion, but you absolutely have a choice. Some people will always be slaves to emotions. I was just reading about a man, who had just been released from prison for killing a man in a road rage incident, who got shot and killed in another road rage incident. Slave to emotions. I feel a lot of powerful negative emotions with this disease. I don't want the time I have left to be miserable so I don't feed them. It's hard and I fail sometimes but the struggle is worth it.

Maybe the hardest thing to deal with regarding this flood of emotions is forgiving myself for them. Once I realized that the negative feelings came from a place I could beyond my control, that the real problem was my reactions to them, I realized there wasn't really anything to forgive. It's like that in life, know that some things come from the animal part of you and give it its due,  you can't control the impulse, feeling, whatever it is. You can and must, I think, choose how you will react to them. Knowing that has helped me immensely in dealing with things. I hope it helps others reading this too.

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People ask me all the time how they can help us.  For the most part we are doing okay for now ourselves but there are a few smaller charities that provide direct support to people with ALS that don't get the recognition they should. One of the ones we like i ALS Guardian Angels. Over the Labor Day weekend, September 3rd to be exact, Stephanie will be doing something a little crazy to help raise money for them. click on the following link to learn more. https://www.youcaring.com/als-guardian-angels-575001
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