But what about loyalty?

For the past few weeks I've been suggesting that a way through this life, which is sooo not the one I had planned, is to dream of the future, to think of all the things I still want to do, to draw up lists and, in fact, to have an exit strategy.  For several years I worked for a children's charity and my job roles always revolved around funding with an end date and an exit strategy for when that funding finished and I've realised this is much the same.  I don't have an end date any more than anyone else in my situation but I do know there will be an end to it all and I know that, for my own sanity. I need to have a plan for then.  So I think all this and I say some of it and then I hear faint rumblings in the background as some people ask/think 'but what about loyalty?  What about loyalty to Ash and the life you had?'.  Some of this may come from people who have no idea what it feels like to live with someone they no longer recognise but often it comes from those in my situation who feel guilty about thinking of 'afterwards' because it feels disloyal.  The thing is I really don't feel it's disloyal.  Ash and I got together as teenagers and we moulded each other.  Friends who knew us then said recently that he grounded me and he did.  He introduced humour into my life, he taught me to laugh at myself and to not take life so seriously, he made me feel good about myself and he gave me a confidence that I hadn't had before.  All of that is still there and now to muddle along for the next few years only to emerge at the end not knowing what to do next seems such a waste of the person I am now and a waste of the me that Ash helped to create.  We're lucky (I think) in that Ash's decline is slow, he still loves the life he has and he's happy living here with friends around him but he really isn't the Ash I knew and loved so I don't feel guilty about my future plans and I've given myself permission to make more of them.  Doing that does not diminish what went before but, I think, validates the choice Ash made when he saw the potential in me all those years ago.  In actual fact I think he would be proud of me and my coping strategies and I feel, finally, that my life didn't come to an end with that diagnosis.

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