MS and Anger

Today is Thursday.  Yesterday it was two weeks since my Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis on May 19th. Physically, I feel a bit better today than I did yesterday and still better than the day before that, but emotionally yesterday was really, really tough.

Last night I finally cried.  It wasn’t as intense as I expected it to be, but it sure sucked.  I’ve basically been deeply angry (still am) for two weeks, ever since my diagnosis.  Just absolutely fucking furious!  (I will not apologize for my language as I write these entries.  If you’re sensitive, get over it.)  I’m managing to keep it together for the most part, but I started feeling chinks in my well-composed armor a few days ago and understood that the floodgates were about to open, so I was simultaneously prepared and caught off-guard.  Maybe the emotional release of last night isn’t over.  Maybe that was just the start of a larger, more intense one, but at least I was able to let some of it out.

I’ve never been suicidal.  Ever.  I’ve been self-destructive, yes, but never suicidal.  And believe me, if I had ever been, I would not be here right now.  But last night the thought hit me like a truck: I hate my life!  It was so intense, and – from where I thought I was within my own head space – so completely out of nowhere that I suddenly started thinking about what it might be like to just not be here anymore.  Except, in the very same thought – these two thoughts were basically on top of one another – I remembered all the billions of reasons why I would never ever do that.  It isn’t me, and it isn’t fear…it’s my people.  There are too many people that I care too deeply about to ever put them through the pain they’d go through if I were to be selfish enough to take my own life.  For example, I remember what it was to be a young teenager without a mother and would never intentionally put my kids through that pain.  THAT in itself is reason enough, but there are so many more.  So, those thoughts rolling over and around one another in the same millisecond inside my flawed brain were what threw the gates open and allowed the waterworks to start.

Then hubby brought Booker (our 20lb weirdo of a black cat) to me because he’s squishy and sweet and made me feel a bit better.  Then hubby and I sat together, and I relayed some of my thoughts to him.  Not the suicide part.  Not just then.  Because I was mortified that the thought had even crossed my mind, so I eliminated that part from our conversation.  But the anger came through.

Today, now, I still feel very, very fragile emotionally.  And now I have to go to work and try to concentrate but I can’t, and I have so much to do.  I’m waiting for the neurologist to get back to me about whether or not I need another round of steroid infusions and that’s taking longer than I’d like, so I’m frustrated.  I’ll be calling them this afternoon if I don’t hear from them this morning. For now, I’m going to do the next thing. Whatever that next thing is.  Start to finish.  All day long.  And then it will be time for me to go home and do the next thing there.  Step by step, little by little, I will get though this, but right now, there is too much.

TTFN
JMS