Bigger Than Me

I don't usually blog this late in the day but my eyeballs feel too dry and sore to close. This morning my littlest dog was hit and killed in the road. I adored that little thing. He adored me. He slept pressed up against me and if I moved he would readjust to be pressed up to me again. I went outside to call him because he wasn't with the big dogs and saw him lying in the road in front of the house. He had been hit so hard his eyeballs were knocked out but there was no blood, it was all internal. From that moment this whole day has felt like a bad dream that I can't wake up from. I have been swallowed up by a grief that is bigger than me right now and it has me thinking about other times my grief has been bigger than me.



There are the other pets that I have lost in my life. Those were like what I am feeling now but so far in the past that I can think back to that pet fondly without wringing more tears from my swollen eyelids. Then the obvious breakups that break the heart and leave me wondering that my sorrow doesn't show on the outside. When I'm hurting this bad, I am shocked that I can look normal to the untrained eye. I feel like my clothes should be as ragged and ripped up as my heart is. That all the ugly, bad feelings in me should be smeared across my face so the whole world knows how I'm feeling inside. So I don't have to try to smile and make small talk when I have to struggle to comprehend the most basic words.



I got the phone call at home when I was diagnosed. I knew that the doctor was going to call me after the MRI results, but was hoping that it would not be what I was dreading. When she told me that there was no other way to interpret the results other than MS, I could barely thank her and hang up the phone before I fell to the floor crying. <----This is where I got cut off last night by a thunderstorm. I have been pondering the times in my life when the pain has been bigger than me. Where you just have to keep breathing in and out and know that someday -- hopefully sooner rather than later -- the pain will come down to manageable size. The pain upon realizing that I have MS was so much bigger than me for so long, I didn't think it would ever subside and let me be something other than a big ball of pain. It did take a long time, but I learned a lot from it. I learned to be with the pain, cry when I feel like it, mourn when I need to, make no apologies for my sadness and know that someday it will be much better than it is right now. Today I have to focus on breathing in and out -- and remembering that someday it will be better.