Truth.

We all tell ourselves and others stories.

We create our narrative.  We edit.  We decide who sees what.  The stories share themes, they share broad brush strokes, but each story is different in the details.

For example, the story I tell my husband is drastically different from the story I tell my friends. My husband knows the intricacies of my days, the struggles, the coping mechanisms, the sadness and frustration, the joy and excitement.  He knows what medicine weeks mean and when I need to sleep for fourteen hours.  He knows how fickle my legs are, how vitally important Lydia can be.  He knows how debilitating stress and anxiety are, how they wreak havoc with my entire physical wellness; he recognizes the fatigue and shoulders the burdens.   There is raw honesty in the story I share with my husband.

The stories I share with my friends vary — I don’t want to trouble them; to appear to want or need pity.  I know that some things are beyond the realm of comprehension — that there is too great a disparity between the appearance of me and the reality of me to reconcile.  I can save them the weight, the awkwardness of not knowing how to react, or to feel uncomfortable, by telling a cultivated version of my story — one where I can meet them for dinner and walk around parks and go home and be fine.  Wake up the next day and continue to expel multitudes of fathomless energy.

Who benefits from the struggles of my life?  No one.  I’d rather they be my own, I’d rather not have to share them, and fracture the facade I’ve created for myself.

But sometimes there are moments when nothing else suffices.  Sometimes, I have to let down my walls, I have to share more of the story I live rather than the one I write.

It is humbling.  It leaves me feeling vulnerable and exposed.

It makes the deep sadness of living with MS nearly unbearable.

Xoxo, g