"It's the first time I have hope."
Selma Blair is not letting her M.S. stop her from living. In fact, in a new interview with Glamour, the actress said that receiving her diagnosis in 2018 was actually a relief, and now that she has an answer for her years of pain and has settled into her new life, Blair is ready to put herself out there again. Meaning, she’s getting back in the dating scene.
“I think I deserve it and think I’m in a great place to show up as the best version of me. It's the first time I have hope. And I could have never said that in my life before," she explained to the publication. "I still believe if I’m just true to myself, that person will come into my life one day.”
Someone even recently caught her eye at a friend's birthday gathering, though the two haven't connected since (ahem, call her!). "Something in this person inspired me to see myself differently by the way he looked at the world," she shared. "Just from that brief meeting, I thought, I have something I didn’t know I did.”
And having a disability doesn't have to stop her from sexual proclivities, either. “I think the 'disability' word … it just confuses people. Like, as if I don’t have a vagina.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Blair spoke about a relationship from her past that she's come to realize was abusive. At the time, she felt that she "deserved" that kind of treatment.
“I didn’t realize how emotionally abusive and controlling they were, taking advantage of meeting me in a really vulnerable time," she said. "I was convinced that’s what I deserved … When you’re in a rough spot, you can meet some opportunistic people. It’s really dangerous.”
Since her diagnosis, some situations in her past make more sense now knowing that she was suffering from M.S., including child labor. After giving birth to her son Arthur in 2011, she noticed something was not right with her body.
“The M.S. flared very obviously when I was in labor,” she said. “My body started going through distress as bodies can, and, of course, I didn’t know I had it. And so the moment Arthur was born, I went from this kind of blissful pregnancy to utter devastation.”
“Everything was too overwhelming," she added. “I couldn’t be in a relationship. There was nothing I could do except be a mother. And I was brutally tired and I didn’t have a support system. I didn’t know how to set one up.”