You, Me + MND: Make your mess, your message.

Me, getting ready for a viewing. Beard and all.

For years, I was always incredible at putting on a hardcore and happy front (not to be confused with happy hardcore—very different kettle of fish). It always used to amaze me that I didn’t pursue drama at school. I’d be sitting at my desk at work, feeling like there was a tornado of anger and sadness whirling around my body, sometimes even letting the tears roll, and then realise I needed to get to a viewing of a £3m house in five minutes. In the minutes before my viewings, I’d be flying around Canford Cliffs with my music (usually The Greatest Show from The Greatest Showman, of course) on full blast, composing myself and practising smiling, ready for the big show. I would casually get out of the car and flash my best estate agent smile (polished, terrifying) and a handshake like my nervous system and mental health weren’t on fire. With an average of four viewings a day, I became a top-drawer blagger.

I’ll be honest, sometimes I couldn’t muster up the energy—and that probably depended on who I was meeting. Some people could just be quite obnoxious and frankly unbearable, because I was just the estate agent that was out to get them (still, to this day, I am really not sure why people think if they tell the estate agent they like the house, we will immediately rob them and kidnap their family). I remember one chap making a huge assumption about my life and saying, “Well, you just want your commission so you can go out and flash it around.” At this point, the inner tornado came to the surface—his overall ignorance and just general attitude got me. I looked him dead in the eye and said, “Well, wouldn’t that be just lovely, but no—I’ll be at home with my terminally ill husband, who I care for full-time.” The shock on his face was a picture.

You may think I was a bit harsh, perhaps unprofessional—and you might be right—but I would invite you to deal with the general public in Canford Cliffs for a few weeks and then come back to me. Instantly, he warmed up. He wanted to know more, and his whole attitude and persona changed. He totally judged a book by its cover. He had decided I was a young female estate agent, totally money-hungry, with a surface-level personality, probably a bit thick, and that he could be rude if he wanted. What a treat. Maybe if he’d shown a bit of humanity from the get-go, we could’ve skipped the hostility and just had a nice wander through a grossly overpriced property together.

You just have no idea what anyone is going through behind the scenes—and how it might be a struggle for them to even get out of bed in the morning to be at the point of interacting with you.

Anyway, back to me being a walking disaster zone.

I’ve been reading a self-help book recently by Dr Laura Williams. In the book, she quotes another psychologist, who said, “Make your mess your message.” That really resonated with me. I think it got me for a couple of reasons: firstly, I am a mess—but also, we’re all human, which means we’re messy. No one is perfect (and if you think you are, for that reason I would suggest you’re not). So wouldn’t it be just lovely if we were able to help others who are also in a mess? Maybe I can turn my personal shitstorm into something vaguely helpful.

I’ll be honest, I have no idea what my message is currently, but I’m sure I’ll work it out—and I’ll let you know.

It’s been just over a year since I put my first blog out. The messages I received, far and wide, were amazing. I actually couldn’t keep up with them—and if I’m being honest with myself, maybe I didn’t want to. It was such a huge thing for me to put everything out there, and I didn’t want the attention or anyone to feel sorry for me. It was more therapy for myself to write everything down. It almost felt like a clear-out. Like when you decide to throw a load of clothes out or delete pictures from your camera roll—it felt like I was getting things out of my mind.

I haven’t read that blog back. I probably never will. Because if I do, I’ll cringe myself into a new personality and delete it faster than you can say “emotional vulnerability.” But the point wasn’t perfection—the point was connection (poetic, I know). If someone out there is struggling with a partner who has MND, they might see that I’m struggling too. Yay, trauma bonding!

I never thought I would admit to struggling mentally. I’ve always been hard, with very much a ‘crack on’ attitude. I’d put a brave face on it and pretend all was well—but unfortunately, I’ve recently found out that isn’t a great plan long-term, and apparently an exceptionally dark sense of humour only takes you so far until your friends start to pressure you to see a counsellor. I no longer have the patience, the inclination or the ability to pretend all is well. Which is no surprise, considering all is absolutely not well—my husband has motor neurone disease, he’s not getting better, and neither of us are very pleased about it.

There are pros and cons to the fact that nothing much has really changed with Danny’s illness in the last year or so: pros being he hasn’t got worse, cons being he certainly isn’t any better. We have eight members of staff here now, all of whom are amazing, and I wouldn’t be without them. The only problem is—it’s allowed me to stop.

It turns out stopping isn’t great. When you’re in the whirlwind of a shit show, living in fight mode 24/7, you think how great it would be if things were different, and you weren’t quite so stressed or sleep-deprived, and didn’t have quite so much on your to-do list. But when you stop, and you look back at the shit show, and you have time to evaluate what’s happened and what’s coming, things get pretty dark, pretty quick.

Apparently, the darkness is a by-product of trauma. I’ve learnt recently from Dr Williams that trauma isn’t just one event; she writes, “Trauma doesn’t always stem from the big events, but involves the daily experiences that shape our personalities and how we relate to others.” Which makes sense to me—because the big events, gnarly as they were, I thought I could handle to a certain degree. But those eight years of pretending I was fine while my husband slowly lost the ability to move, eat, or breathe on his own? Yes. That counts.

I’ve also learnt a lot about empathy—and how the level of empathy you can offer will change as you change because of trauma. One of my closest friends is studying nursing and was learning about types of empathy. With her newfound knowledge, she has labelled me with ‘detached concern’—which naturally offers quite a lot of piss-taking. She was on the brink of a panic attack about a potential outfit for a night out earlier today, and frankly I couldn’t have given less of a fuck, which resulted in ‘detached concern!’ being screamed at the top of her lungs.

Joking aside, it is very easy to get to a point of empathetic exhaustion when you’re caring for someone you love and there is no end—until it fully ends. And that thought is horrendous. So you’re sort of stuck. I’ve been so focused on trying to keep Danny upbeat for so many years that I haven’t really even thought—let alone been able to process—my own emotions. So I’ve ended up fairly numb and spending a fair amount of time staring at the lounge ceiling. The plastering isn’t perfect, which is just the cherry on top of a shit cake.

If you haven’t heard of MND before, or read my previous blog, MND is a disease in which you slowly disappear. Your muscles reduce until there is nothing left. Danny is wheelchair-bound. He can’t move his arms, eat, or breathe on his own. And the best part is—in 2025, no one in the world has found a cure. Brilliant.

MND is an expert joy-thief. I’d love to say it’s not beating us, but let’s be honest—MND is a ruthless little bastard with a god complex. It just keeps taking.

In the spirit of making my mess my message, I guess my message is: don’t stop, stay stressed, keep suppressing your emotions, oh, and don’t judge a book.

No, that can’t be right. Okay—definitely don’t judge a book. You don’t know how hard it can be for some people to get out of bed in the morning. ‘Crack on’ doesn’t work. Talk to someone. You can talk to me. And let’s keep fighting to find a cure for MND (if anyone has any ideas, please let me know...).

Annabella x