"I didn't know what was happening."
Selma Blair is getting candid about her multiple sclerosis symptoms.
The 46-year-old actress took to Instagram on Thursday to share a throwback pic of herself from a time when she began experiencing the first symptoms of MS. Blair was diagnosed with the "potentially disabling disease of the brain and spinal cord" last August, and publicly revealed the news in October.
In the profile shot, Blair, wearing a pink top, looks happy while eating dinner outside with a friend.
"A beautiful summer night in Miami. My flare was already hitting. I didn’t know what was happening," she wrote alongside the pic. "But I sat outside and had a gorgeous dinner with my dear friend. All we have is right now. This. Is the past. But I remember knowing to just feel the warmth in the breeze. The gift of this trip."
"Under the table my leg was dead. I couldn’t stay awake and my right hand couldn’t find my mouth. But I was happy," she added.
Blair continued her post by revealing that her 7-year-old son, Arthur, was sleeping next to her as she recalled the Miami memory.
"My son is asleep next to me. I hear his breathing. That of a tender soul, a young boy who will wake full of energy," she wrote. "I am going to curl up next to him. Cause that is what this wonderful life can bring. The now. The now I love. So... goodnight. ???. #now #twinkle"
The post came just over a week after Blair gave her first interviews since revealing her diagnosis. On Good Morning America, Blair revealed that, prior to her diagnosis and unbeknownst to her, she had been in the midst of a flare-up since Arthur's birth.
“I was self-medicating when [Arthur] wasn’t with me. I was drinking. I was in pain. I wasn't always drinking, but there were times when I couldn't take it and I was really struggling with, ‘How am I going get by in life?’" she said. "... I even got to the point where I said, ‘I need to go to work and I have to stay awake.’ I dropped my son off at school a mile away and before I got home I'd have to pull over and take a nap. And I was ashamed. And I was doing the best I could, and I was a great mother, but it was killing me.”
Additionally, Blair wasn’t “taken seriously by doctors,” and was told that her symptoms were due to her being “a single mother,” being “exhausted” or dealing with finances.
Once her diagnosis did come, though, Blair “cried with some relief” after years of “giving it everything to seem normal.”
“I cried. I had tears. They weren't tears of panic. They were tears of knowing I now had to give in to a body that had loss of control,” she said. “... I cried with some relief. Like, 'Oh, good, I'll be able to do something.'"
Additionally, Blair told Vanity Fair that "there's no tragedy" for her in her diagnosis and said that she now hopes to help others dealing with disabilities.
"I’m happy, and if I can help anyone be more comfortable in their skin, it’s more than I’ve ever done before," she said.
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