Broke Down
Kiela, just after getting her tattoo. Photo & tattoo by Zach Baker (tattoosbyzach.com)
A couple nights ago, after weeping ceaselessly for many hours, I called my very dear and wonderful friend Kiela. When she answered the phone, I half-cried the word “hi” and continued weeping. We sat silently on the phone like this for some time.
Then she said, “I think I like you better this way.”
Perhaps you think this is an odd and offensive thing for one friend to say to another in such a moment. But I knew exactly what she meant, and I agreed.
Here’s the thing – it isn’t possible to look such a deep ache in the face and maintain any pretense. My sadness had stripped me of everything except my self – the authentic, vulnerable, open, naked essence of me. And as caught up as I was in my own emoting, I was simultaneously reveling in the space that had opened up as everything else fell away. The space that I don’t always allow for myself. The space that sometimes I forget to be in. The space where I am completely authentic.
Do you remember the moment of your diagnosis? If it was anything like mine, you were dumbstruck.
I love the word dumbstruck. Struck dumb.
I think everyone could really benefit from being struck dumb. Because we trap ourselves in all the things we think we know, about the world, about who we are, how we are, and what we think we want. But the strike of a diagnosis like MS evaporates that knowing. And for a moment, in the surreality of the information we just received, the slate is cleaned.
We know nothing.
The person we thought we were is no longer. The future we thought was coming is no longer. With one sentence we are broken down. You have Multiple Sclerosis. And here, in this moment, we are more fertile, more ready to find out who we really are then we likely have been in a long, long time.
Kiela has a tattoo on her neck that says “Broke Down.” It’s the essence of the work she has been put on this earth to do.
When you are broke down, what’s left? When you have broken down all the expectations others have of you, all the expectations you have of yourself, all the ways you think you need to be to feel safe and get love, when all of that is gone, who are you?
A diagnosis like MS is a beautiful gift, if recognized. If utilized. It can be just another place to hide, or it can be the call to the adventure of your life. Because if the MS doesn’t wake you up, something else will, or at least it’ll try. As Kiela says to the clients she works with, “You can hold on for as long as you want, but it’s coming for you.”
(I love that.)
Want more inspiration? Read A Good Bet or go to the main page to Get Inspired.
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