Multiple Sclerosis is a bitch 

           First impressions are what we center our perceptions around.  The first time we meet someone, our eyes scan them and pick out their physical traits instantly.  Hair color, eye color, gender, height, weight; all these factors contribute to how we see the person.  However, who we appear to be on the surface is not always who we truly are at first glance.  How often has your first impression of someone been 100% accurate?  Every single person has been misjudged at least once in his or her life.  These acts of misjudgment have been prevalent for centuries. They have become a part of our history and engrained in our culture.  Each individual has more to his or her story than the first page.  Each of us is fighting an internal battle with something.  We are not our first impressions.

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            In Jeffrey Overstreet’s To Make People Wonder, he deconstructs the work of Fritz Liedtke, an award-winning photographer.  Liedke’s photographs are more than just high-quality photos.  Liedtke captures something in his pictures.  He has found a way to successfully instill within his audiences misunderstanding and deception.  He asks them to take a closer look and ask questions about the person captured in front of them.  The photos speak volumes with their quiet stillness. “Her mouth is taped shut.  That’s what gets your attention first. At first glance, a photograph like this might trigger alarm or suspicion. But context is everything” (Overstreet).   Yet even with their intriguing dispositions, you still have the power to make a quick judgment and give no interest in looking further.  This is what is terrifying; the hasty assumptions, lack of compassion, and naive ignorance. These attributes are not only misleading when looking at photographs; but they have begun hindering our vision when looking at people, as well.
 

           A woman smiling with tears in her eyes could be crying tears of joy or smiling to hide the pain.  That woman sitting next to you at the hair salon spending an obscene amount of money on hair dye?  She is a cancer survivor. The man digging through the recyclables outside of your grocery store?  He is donating every cent to charity.  Context is everything.

           My mom was 44 years old when it happened.  It was a progressive downward spiral, but in the blink of an eye it seemed to hit her all at once. It hit all of us all at once. Something was wrong.  She was losing feeling in her legs.  Her feet were purple from lack of circulation.  Her hands were trembling. The first specialist interrogated her as if she had done something wrong to make this happen. “She looks fine to me.” I remember coming home to her crying in her room.  She would blare the television to drown out her tears, but I heard her.  I heard her.  I heard her sob to my father, apologizing for her symptoms. I heard her pull herself together and pretend that everything was okay because the specialist had made her believe that everything was. My mother’s appearance did not reflect her pain. 
 

         She looked healthy.
 

         She wasn’t.
 

        Her beautiful porcelain skin was a mask covering a disease that was destroying her inside. She had no physical label proclaiming, “I am sick.”  It took almost six months and four different doctors for the diagnosis.  I remember the day like it was yesterday.  I came home from school to a quieter house than usual. One of my older brothers came out my parents’ room crying.  He was a junior in high school.  I had never seen him cry before. I sat down on the couch, unsure of what to do or how to act.  I was afraid to see her and hear the news because I knew that once it was said aloud, it would become real.  Yet, when the words, “Mom has Multiple Sclerosis,” reached me, I was in disbelief. 
 

       Multiple Sclerosis, or MS, is a disease where the body’s immune system attacks its own nerve cells.  Essentially, the brain’s communication with the spinal cord and other parts of the body short-circuits. Signs and symptoms vary widely, depending on the amount of damage and which nerves are affected (National Multiple Sclerosis Society). Some people with severe MS may lose the ability to walk independently or at all, while others experience long periods of remission during which they develop no new symptoms. There is no cure for Multiple Sclerosis.   
 

        What makes this disease so sinister is its ability to cripple someone from the inside out without ever changing any physical appearance.  To the world my mother was not a victim of Multiple Sclerosis; she was a healthy.  She had nothing to show that she was weak in her legs, or that her mind was slowly losing its ability to make fluent sentences.  Her hands that were once used for crocheting and puzzles were now permanently shaking.  Tremors had taken away her hobbies.  Her legs that were once used for taking long walks and running were now limiting her to go anywhere she wanted to go.  Standing for more than twenty minutes was no longer an easy task. When she left her teaching job, no one understood why she was no longer able to work.  She was embarrassed to resign because she knew her disease was not visible to everyone. 

 

            In Overstreet’s To Make People Wonder, he shares what his favorite photographs by Liedtke are.  While immersing the reader in colorful descriptions and somber art, he writes, “Sometimes his subjects are finding their feet, endearing in their self-assurance and whimsy.” My mother has been trying to find her feet for the last 7 years.  She wants nothing more than to regain feeling in her legs.  She does not limit herself; she pushes herself to accomplish what she wants to do.  She does not let her symptoms define who she is, but they still have their grip on her.  I admire her more than anyone.  Not many people know what she is going through, not only because MS is transparent, but because of her fighting spirit. It is easy to compare To Make People Wonder with what people can see or otherwise perceive and what is actually going on.  Liedtke’s photographs appear to be simple and direct at first glance; however, each photograph is full of more than just pixels.  Behind each face there is a story, a family, an accomplishment, a tragedy. What is their name?  What happened to them?  Who do they have at the end of the day? We only see one image of them; one page of their story.  It is up to us to not close the book right then and there.  We should never simply skim the surface and then accept what we skimmed to be true.  We should keep reading; we should always keep reading.  
 

            “Sometimes they telegraph doubt and insecurity, caught in the act of sinking and calling out for help,” (Overstreet). While he is referring to Liedtke’s photographs, Overstreet could apply this very observation to the handicapped population.  Those who are in need of help are often too embarrassed to ask for it.  Instead, they decline any offers and insist on doing everything for themselves.  In other cases, some feel like they cannot ask for help because they do not appear to look like someone who justifies asking. 
 

          A few years ago, a 32-year-old woman professed her tragic story regarding asking for help in public.  She was a victim of Multiple Sclerosis and looked as normal as can be on the outside.  However, one of her symptoms included the loss of control of her bladder.  She was out to a baseball game with her husband when suddenly she found herself panicking.  She needed to find a restroom.  When she saw that there was a line wrapping around the outside of the door, she knew she was in danger.  She approached a woman near the front of the line and politely presented her case. After explaining to her that she had Multiple Sclerosis and was going to lose control of her bladder if she did not get into the bathroom shortly, the woman in line laughed.  “You think I am really going to believe that?” she snickered in her face, “You don’t even look sick. Nice try lady.  Get to the back of the line.”  What disgusts me is the lack of sympathy that this woman had.  The young woman with Multiple Sclerosis was forced to leave the stadium and urinate in a cup in her car.  She was too mortified to return to the game.  This has become a more common problem than many may believe. 
 

          I was out shopping with my mom on a Saturday afternoon this past spring when I experienced something I never would have imagined happening to us.  After losing a lot of feeling in her legs, my mom reluctantly gave in to applying for a handicap-parking permit about a year after her diagnosis.  She hated it.  To her, it was a defeat. I had never thought anything of it.  She could not walk like she used to and the handicap parking was an obvious supplement that, for just a moment, could provide her some relief.  Still, I found her often times passing up opportunities to use it. Instead, she would park a few spaces further down and walk the extra twenty feet. However, today was different.  Today she could not make it those extra twenty feet. 
 

          The parking lot was full.  We had scaled every aisle about three times just to be sure of it.  The only non-handicap spots available to claim were those that resided at the very back of the parking lot.  I refused to let her park in those, knowing that she would rather force herself to walk until exhaustion than take a handicap parking space.  I mentioned my leg was cramping up even though it wasn’t.  This was a regular routine: she avoided the handicap parking space until she could justify parking there.  It made her feel better to think she was doing it for me, not for her.  But we both knew whom she was parking for.
 

         After parking the car and hanging the blue iconic handicapped placard on the rear view mirror, we proceeded to get out and started to walk to the store entrance.  After about five steps from the car, I heard an elderly man behind us mumbling under his breath. He was outraged that we had used a handicapped parking space. It was un-called for. My mother would give anything to park 100 feet away and be able to walk without worrying about losing feeling in her legs. For this man to think he was entitled to to have such a strong opinion about something he knew absolutely nothing about was infuriating. She had no physical badge to show her illness and she was unrightfully deemed defenseless in a situation that should have never arose in the first place. He knew nothing of her daily struggles.  He did not know she was constantly worrying if she was going to be able to dance with my brother at his wedding or if she would be around to see me walk down the aisle. He knew she looked normal. Context is everything.
 

            Overstreet writes, “Most of us are drawn to the people we have been conditioned to notice.” We have been conditioned to recognize what sickness looks like.  If someone does not have hair, has sunken eyes, or is extremely thin, we are more compelled to feel compassion towards them.  We can identify that there is something wrong with them.  Would you be more willing to help a man walk up the stairs if you could tell he was ill just by his appearance?  Now, would you be willing to help a man walk up the stairs if he looked completely healthy to you?  We should be willing to help anyone regardless of his or her physical appearance.  However, we have been conditioned to have answers at the tip of our fingers.  We want to be able to know everything instantly. With the impressive technology that exists today, our minds have morphed into systems revolving around speed and efficiency.
 

            Liedtke’s photographs depict the lives of people whose stories will never fully be exposed.  All we get to see is one image of them at one flicker of a moment.  We do not know their stories, their aspirations, or what they have been through.  When looking at photographs, all you can do is judge based on what you see.  First impressions can often give you a false sense of what you are looking at.  What can be detrimental is taking these first impressions as the only impression.  We must stop holding hasty judgments to their highest standard because we have nothing else to compare them to. 
 

          The woman with tears in her eyes must be crying tears of joy because we were not there to see her husband beat her.  The little boy covered in dirt must have just gotten out of playing in the mud because we were not there to see him sleep in the dirt for the third night this week.  What we do not know says more about us than what we do know.   Misjudgments and misperceptions do not define those that are being looked down upon, but those who are taking the liberty of looking down upon. 
 

          Our minds have been rerouted to ignore the details and focus on the big picture.  We see what we want to see.  This conditioning that has taken over is causing more harm than good. The wave of ignorance that is consuming the world will soon drown all of us.  Before we know it, the decisions we make will have no prior thought behind them.  We will be voting on issues with no real stance on them. We could be putting our trust in someone who simply appeared to be what we wanted them to be. We will lose our ability to defend each other and ourselves.  So how do we stop this plague of ignorance?  It takes 3 seconds to stop and think before you act.  “Put yourself in the other person’s shoes,” they used to say back in elementary school.  You may just save a life with your act of kindness. You may just save a mother. Context is everything.

 

Works Cited

1. Overstreet, Jeffrey. "To Make People Wonder." The Collaborative Portraits of Fritz Liedtke. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print.

2. "What Is MS?" National Multiple Sclerosis Society. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Nov. 2014.