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⚠️ This Blog is a space for honest conversations about my personal experiences with MS, mental health, and the weird paranormal, liminal, and everything in between. I’m not a doctor, therapist, or expert in the unexplained; I’m just someone sharing my story and offering solidarity. If you’re struggling, please reach out to a trusted friend, support group, or professional. And if the weird stuff sparks your curiosity, remember: stay open-minded, but always prioritise your well-being.⚠️
please remember I suffer with severe cognitive dysfunction, and use AI to proof read and help solve this issue so you can understand it
Well, It’s the Weekend. Apparently.
Well, it’s the weekend, apparently. So I hope everyone out there in Blog land or, more accurately, My Living Hell land is having an absolutely marvellous one.
Here it is dark, cold, wet and thoroughly miserable. Proper British weather: the sort that makes you wonder whether the sky has simply given up and started leaking.
No market for me this Saturday. I doubt I’ll even be going out. Autumn has arrived, winter is looming behind it like an unpaid bill, and it is time to start wrapping up again. Joy. Another season of layers, damp socks and pretending the weather is “quite fresh”.
This week has been fraught. Stress attacks, setbacks, pressure, crossed wires, people not listening properly the usual human circus, only with less popcorn and more exhaustion.
I think I am slowly crawling back towards a strange kind of non-normal normal. If you live with progressive MS, you may understand that one. “Normal” is often just the bit between one problem and the next problem arriving with a clipboard.
My head has not been in a good place. I have felt pressured and aggravated, mostly because people seem to hear words but not actually listen to what is being said. That creates misunderstandings, then more problems, then suddenly everybody is wandering around holding the wrong end of the stick and wondering why the room smells of smoke.
I have always done things off the cuff. I shoot from the hip. I do not enjoy being forced into scripts, boxes or somebody else’s carefully organised system for explaining who I am. I have been doing my own thing for years.
And yes, I use AI sometimes, like most people now. But I do not want every human conversation shoved through a machine and turned into a polished beige corporate paragraph. Sometimes that is exactly where the meaning gets lost. AI can tidy grammar, but it cannot always understand tone, history, frustration, humour, illness, personality or the thousand invisible things behind a sentence.
That is why the podcast will be as it happens.
No fake polish. No cutting out every cock-up. No pretending I am some perfect media-trained robot in a jumper. It will be real: a bloke with progressive MS, a camera, a microphone, a brain that does not always play by the rules, and probably several moments where technology behaves like it has joined the opposition.
Over winter, I hope to talk honestly about life with MS not just the symptoms people can see, but what it does to your thinking, memory, confidence, communication and sense of self. MS does not just mess with your legs. It can get into your head, your planning, your energy, your patience, and your ability to feel like the same person you once were.
I also want to talk about the stranger side of my life: the patterns I notice, the experiences I have had, spirituality, paranormal questions, UFOs, ghosts, consciousness and the things that do not fit neatly into a medical leaflet.
I am not here to force my beliefs onto anyone. I am sharing my experiences and asking questions, as I have done for decades. People are free to think I am eccentric, mistaken, fascinating, completely bonkers or all four before lunch. That is their right.
What I do know is that dismissing someone’s lived experience without listening is not good enough either. I am still asking questions. I am still looking for answers. And I am still very much here.
On Sunday, I have an MRI scan.
I hate MRI scans.
The noise, the enclosure, the waiting, the white-coat anxiety—the whole thing is a nightmare wrapped in hospital lighting. People say, “It’s only an MRI, don’t worry.” Brilliant. Thank you. I will now simply switch off decades of medical stress and trauma because someone said “don’t worry” in a reassuring voice.
Of course I know the staff are doing their jobs, and most are kind people. It is not about them personally. It is about what hospitals represent after years of appointments, explanations, tests, disbelief, stress and being made to feel as though you are somehow inconvenient for being ill.
The one possible advantage of an MRI on a Sunday is parking. In theory. At the main hospital, you need to leave about an hour and a half early just to stand a fighting chance of finding a space. When you are in a wheelchair and have to find the right department afterwards, it stops being a hospital visit and becomes a low-budget endurance challenge.
Meanwhile, the four-wheel scooter of death has been looked at.
The repair man said it feels badly underpowered and asked whether it really has the motor it is supposed to have. That was comforting. Nothing says confidence quite like the bloke fixing it looking mildly horrified.
There may also have been a battery connection issue from the start. Excellent. So perhaps I have bought a mobility scooter that has the pulling power of a damp lettuce.
This week, Albertine and I will test it properly. She will be on the three-wheel scooter of death, and I will be on the four-wheel scooter of no hope. If it is still performing like a reluctant shopping trolley, then we will have to push the company for proper answers. Their response time so far has been suspiciously slow. Funny how urgency evaporates once they have your money.
On the positive side, the podcast setup is ready. Microphone, camera, sound, studio—the lot. I will be recording the first episode in the next few days and hosting it myself.
So yes, soon you will be able to see me and hear me, which may be too much reality for some people. But there we are.
This is not just going to be a podcast about MS. It will be about everything that comes with it: the absurdity, the fear, the humour, the brain fog, the anger, the spiritual questions, the weirdness, the loneliness, the love, and the bloody determination to remain myself in the middle of it all.
Whatever you believe, wherever you are, and however strange your own corner of reality may feel today, I wish you peace, healing, love and light.
Have a decent weekend if you can.
And if you cannot, at least try not to buy a scooter with the acceleration of a dead snail.
Peace and love.
Warlock Dark
Chronic illness survivor, truth-teller, occasional bastard. From My Living Hell (For those who came here by accident: yes, my living hell is real. And yes, we still fight. Every shitty day. With defiance.)
☣ This Is Not A Blog About MS
This Is My Life With MS ☣
