Three Words

conversations with myself, and my body's slow road to trusting me again

Photo by Chris Jarvis on Unsplash

“I got you.” Three words that I have lovingly offered to others, I now also give myself. I don’t have a single moment that shook me into this. I do have many, many moments of dancing awkwardly with these revelations. I do believe this past year has brought me a sort of reckoning that was avoided in the past. Now, there really is no turning back. What my body knows, it knows.

I have come to realize that this self care has to stay paramount. One very humid day last Spring, I collapsed. Literally. I felt everything go dark. Turns out I had fainted. That morning began in a frenzy. I didn’t sleep too well, so when my grandson woke up crying, jumping out of bed kind of frazzled me. I remember feeling kind of shaky as I lifted him.

I was running on empty. My oldest daughter was going through a very painful period, and I was staying over her house to help care for my grandsons, while also teaching preschool. I had returned to work out of financial necessity, and my MS was not happy. This particular crisis, which one day I hope to write more about, had taken more out of me then I could admit. I was in full mama/grandma bear mode.

So when I felt myself fading, I laid down on the floor. My grandsons buzzed around me, playing and dropping waffle pieces on me as they jumped over my head. “Oma, Oma, are you doing yoga?” Not sure what I replied. After a while I needed to use the bathroom. I do remember crawling there. The boys were off watching something on tv, and my daughter was in her room, changing her sheets.

My head was throbbing, I felt so shaky, and like I would throw up. I could feel my heart racing. I knew I was in trouble. I told myself, if I can just lay back down this will pass. Yet as I stood up from the toilet, everything went dark. I woke up on the floor, feeling like every ounce of life was leaving me. It was right then I felt myself grow scared. I knew something wasn’t right. I could barely move, let alone speak. I tried to call my daughter but the words would only whisper weakly. This wasn’t just gonna pass. I had my phone in my pocket, but my vision was only half there. I do remember pulling my pants up at one point as I was on the floor. I guess I wasn’t too out of it to worry that I didn’t want to show anyone my naked ass.

I managed to text my daughter:

something g not right

Pltfslk 0

Call 911

I still wonder sometimes what the second line was supposed to say?

From there I faded in and out. I remember hearing my daughter on the phone, she was touching my head, and saying “mom” and “they are on their way”

I recall trembling, and then being awake but totally out of it.

Then I remember the paramedics, well their feet. I was still on the floor and had no strength.

I was propped up against one of their legs now, and they were checking my vitals.

I was feeling like I was not even there now, but watching myself.

I could hear

“sixty over forty

let’s get her on the ambulance”

My blood pressure was extremely low, which was why I fainted.

I continued to feel like I was in a dream. I was worried, not so much about myself but how this would worry everyone.I didn’t want to scare my grandkids. I didn’t want to ruin our day. My husband and son were almost there with the bagels. I asked for the asiago cheese. The kiddos wanted everything ones. My daughter needed to eat, she hasn’t been eating much.

I was really struggling yet my head still raced with demands. “I need to get up, this can’t be happening today.” My stubbornness was floating around me like a giant bubble. In the fading in and out I would go from a primal fear, as I felt like my life force was being sucked away, to this almost demanding I just “snap out of this.” As if I could summon some strength that was hiding. I could not get up. My body said absolutely not. The paramedics had to put me in one of those cocoon like bags and carry me outside. I could hear a symphony of different voices. They reassured me.

Thankfully, as soon as they gave me fluids, my bp stabilized and I started to come around. They wanted to bring me in to the hospital though, just to be safe. Fast forward to weeks of tests and tribulations. My bp would have crazy fluctuations, I couldn’t sweat, or cry. Autonomic dysfunction was now part of my life, and I surely felt like I had absolutely no control of this craziness. This time of extreme stress alongside MS flaring made for a very scary combination. Talk about signals misfiring. Part of my body was busy attacking itself, and now part of it seemed to be, well broken.

It is difficult to admit that during this time, before I came to the whole “sit with the discomfort,” I was angry, at myself. Without words, I screamed at my body. I made her sad for no longer being able to push past what aches to get shit done. The shit that needed me, the people that were depending on me.

“What do you mean, we can’t? Come on, we may fall down, but we never stay down!”

Learning to sit beside my discomfort has been one of the hardest, yet healing things I have ever done for myself. To pause and hold space for myself, to not look away, to let the pain her have her say, helps my body find her way. I finally stopped running. I let myself grow curious, asking “what are you trying to show me?”

She showed me tender memories, forgotten heartaches, helped me delicately change the bandages of what was still raw and seeping, and rub ease and comfort on the scars. She spoke in songs and poems and exquisite whispers in the dreamscape. She guided me to hear her own voice, my voice, past the noise.

My mama would speak from the beyond. I could feel her desire to walk me through this. I would hear her and the other women before me as they would show me that I was carrying too much. I carried what they weren’t able to put down too. They were going to help me let go of it all, for all of us.

Mary Oliver must have gone through a similar journey, as her voice here speaks of it so beautifully:

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognised as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.

—Mary Oliver

Now I can see the biggest suffering that came from my resistance, the exhaustion from trying to escape. Allowing myself the chance to slow down and witness, to not try so hard to fix it, that is the pause point that made a real difference. This place allows my inner guidance to step in and befriend the discomfort.

This was born out of the days and nights that MS was being extra cranky. When it was difficult to move and do the things I wanted to do. When the physical pain would make me cry. My body was in a rebellion. She needed me to soften, to stop fighting so damned hard. She needed me to stop working so hard taking care of everyone and take care of her. She had come to collect. All the IOU’s, all the promises, all the affirmations.

I have witnessed my body soften. Yes, I still struggle with the ups and downs of MS, my family still needs me, and I will forever be a work in progress. Yet those three words I tell myself, I mean with every part of me.

“Tell me what you need, this moment. You don’t have to push yourself. I am listening. I got you.”

Gentle love,

Tracy