About Me; or, My Life in Pictures

So, this is me. Hi.

 

My name is Melanie. Nice to meet you.

I’ve got a husband named Francois, and a 5 year old named Gabriel.

 

Francois and I have been together for 9 years now, and got married in July 2009.

 

A few months after the wedding, I’d greatly expanded…

 

And, poof! Next thing you know, we were blessed with a teeny tiny human. Who knew they came in such a small format!

 

He’s not quite so little anymore, though…

 

And to celebrate his birth, I went and had this done not long after I’d stopped breast feeding.

 

We’re a very happy family, complete with our fur-baby, Miss Mew.

 

About 8 years ago, now, I slowly started to get sick. I saw countless doctors, went through countless tests. After almost a year of this, I finally was able to see someone who figured out what was going on. The news wasn’t good.

 

And because just one auto-immune disease wasn’t enough, about 3 years later, after so many treatments were tried and failed, my doctor gave me a second diagnosis: fibromyalgia. I may have been able to have a semi-normal life with one or the other. But with both… I’m mostly bed-and-couch-bound. 

In better news, my doctor seems to have finally found the right medication, not only to help ease the pain, but to help with my depression, which was rather (very) severe. It’s a bit sad that I needed medication to do so, but I’ve re-found the joy in life. Doing things with my son has become fun again, and not a painful chore.

 

Because of the illness, I can’t do a lot of day to day stuff. Even relatively simple stuff like emptying and refilling the dishwasher can set off a flare that will cause pain for hours afterwards. I’ve finally had to hire a housekeeper, but that was just another thing to add to the growing list of things that make me feel about as useful as this cat:

 

Despite all this, I’m taking a makeup course, even though in all honesty I’ll never be able to work as a makeup artist. But I love playing with makeup. I love creating looks, playing with colours, and as time goes by I’m getting better (one would hope, hehe). Some days my hands shake too much to do it, but on days they’re not, I take advantage of it. 

 

I also did a wicked makeup for halloween one year. I wasn’t sure I’d gotten good enough to pull something like this off, but, while it’s not perfect, it was still much better than I’d anticipated.

 

But life hasn’t always been so calm and unfortunately illness filled. In my early 20’s, I was a dancer and an alternative model. I did photoshoots and fashion shows regularly.

 

I also used to love to go out dancing. I’d go sometimes up to 4 or 5 times a week! 

I still like to go out to clubs occasionally, but I can’t dance anymore, and I’ve decided the best thing for me was to stop drinking, it had gotten out of hand, and because of all the meds I’m on, it’s very, very dangerous. So no booze for Mel.

So that’s a quick run through of the world of me. Check my blog out for a closer view of what’s inside my brain, hehe.

M.