My head has been a rocky place lately. I just completely randomly remembered a line from one of my favorite movies ever, Raising Arizona:

“Edwina’s insides were a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase,” H.I. McDonnough.

In my case, the line would go, “Beth’s brain was a rocky place where timeless insecurities, dark thoughts and catastrophic thinking took up residence and built extravagant condominiums as if they thrived on barren, stony environs.”

Or something like that.

But, watch Raising Arizona. Really, you won’t regret it. That movie is so full of awesome one-liners it’s making me giggle just thinking about it. Me, giggling! It’s a sound quite foreign to my ears lately. There are a few dynamics driving this grim reality that are kind of ridiculous in and of themselves. Imagine that things so basic like the damn weather could lead me to a near nervous breakdown! But here we are.

It started when I tripped on that rug. I wrote about it in my last post. There’s something about landing on your face and/or backside twice in two weeks that takes the wind out of a gal’s sails. There is nothing more terrifying than feeling like everything around you, indoors and out, is a potential peril to your person.

Basic things start to look sinister. Rugs, walkways, steps and curbs (even cats!) come to mind. Distances longer than 10 or 15 feet start to look like those expanding hallways in horror movies that just keep getting longer and longer the more you try to run to get to the end and you realize there really is no end and the monster is going to get you.  It’s like agoraphobia, oikophobia and basophobia had a baby and created a generalized monster phobia that encompasses a fear of actually living any where in any conditions at any time. It’s a challenge, y’all.

Physical therapy has been a blessing and a curse. On the blessing side, I am getting stronger. That cannot be denied. Yay me! On the curse side, I’m getting better in increments so small they’re almost imperceptible to the naked eye. It would take the equivalent of an electron microscope to see the tiny improvements that are happening in my body that’s how infinitesimal these changes are. But they are happening. I have to cling to that fact with all of my pitiful strength because that’s just where I am in all of this.

I woke up that morning of my last PT session and I knew the minute my feet hit the floor it was going to be a bad MS day. As I did my now-daily stretches before getting out of bed, my legs were not following basic commands. Getting dressed was a ridiculous display of limbs randomly falling off of knees with feet remaining completely shoe-less.

I really like to impress Melissa with my teeny-tiny progress at PT and I felt like it wasn’t even worth going knowing how shitty my body was likely to perform. After the first round of 7 minutes on my bike and a few pelvic tilts, I was exhausted. I looked at Melissa from the mat where I was laying on my side resting and said, “You know what I realized just now? I realized I am never going to get ‘better.’ What we’re doing here is only making me better than before, but I’ll never be better, like for good better, because on any given day I can wake up and feel just like this and I have absolutely no control of when or how long it’s going to last. So being here, this thing we’re doing. this is just to help me make the best of this mess that doesn’t really want to be fixed. This isn’t intended to make me ‘better’ at all.”

Poor Melissa. I wonder if all of her patients are so existentially lost and dark? But do you know what she said to me?

She said, “Well, that might be true but what I just heard you say is that you are getting better at making the best of this or you wouldn’t have been here today doing the things we’re doing and even though they are really hard for you today, you’re here doing them so that means you’re not giving up and neither am I. I heard you say you’re improving! That’s so positive! I’m going to go get that rollator! Let’s practice!” And she scampered off while my face felt stuck to that mat by some kind of superglue.

Which brings me to the rollator. I’ve been resisting the rollator. You guys. I know you know what I’m talking about! It’s what I like to call the slippery slope of mobility aids.

First you get a cane. And that feels OK for a while and you’re stumbling through life all off balance. Then you get some trekking poles or crutches because you realize that two sticks might be better than one and even though you look like a sad excuse for an actual hiker, you suck it up and trek your ass around town.

After falling twice in two weeks, it seems, people in the medical field start to push you toward things that might offer you hope of a bit more stability. The rollator, that glorified walker with handles and wheels and sitting capacity for emergencies that lets you roll about with your own special support system on both sides. It looks like a cage. But it helps you move around without ending up on the ground! From there, in my mind, it’s only a short trip down disability lane to wheelchairs and motorized scooters and all the things you see old people zipping around on in the grocery store.

Let me stop right here and acknowledge the wrong-headedness of this line of thinking.

Objects that help us get around are inherently good things. They are not symbols of failure or limitation! Quite the opposite! They are beacons of independence.

For other people.

Somehow when you’re the one facing all of this independence it becomes a lot less “rah rah mobility aids!” and a lot more like, holy shit, this is my life now. I KNOW. I will get there. You’ve all given me such sage and wise advice on this subject and I’ve listened and I know you’re right. I intellectually and reasonably know you are right. I will get there. I mean, I have to get there, don’t I? Because earlier this very afternoon, I sucked it up and purchased this glorious machine for myself:

My very own rollator! Now when I’m out living my best life, and my legs feel wobbly and weak I can put this baby in park and sit my ass down wherever I happen to be! Imagine such a thing! A chair by my side at all times. Handles to hold on to. A little basket for my trinkets and treasures.

When it arrives on Wednesday next week I will practice getting it collapsed and into and out of my trunk all by myself like the independent woman of the world that I am. I will practice getting this machine into my very tiny trunk in my ridiculous new car that has the world’s tiniest trunk. Fuck it. If it doesn’t fit in the trunk, I’ll drop the top and toss that baby in the back seat. Isn’t that what convertibles are for???

Which brings me to the goddamn weather. How’s that for a transition?

I live in Pittsburgh. It’s not Georgia or Florida or even Tennessee. It’s relatively north! It’s not all THAT far from Canada! But it’s been like the seventh pit of hell here for the last ten days or so. Temperatures in the high 90’s, dew points in the high seventies. Relentless sun or relentless storms both which seem to have a paralyzing effect on my body. My limbs rebel in this kind of heat and humidity to the point where leaving my house for even the short distance it takes me to get to my car can render me useless. Yeh. Good times.

I look outside and I see the sun and the people enjoying summer and I want to stab them. I mean. Not literally of course. Just figurative stabbing. Why can’t I be them? Why can’t I be out there sucking up the vitamin D and laughing off my sweaty situation because hey, it’s summer! We’re all sweaty so pass me another frozen margarita and toss some burgers on the grill because I’m here to suck up some of that good, good summer loving.

There’s something less lonely about being stuck inside in the winter. I think it’s because everyone else is stuck inside too! There’s nothing to miss because most people are inside bitching about how cold they are and how much they hate snow. In the wintertime, we’re all in that long depression together! It helps that I don’t hate being cold and I kind of think snow is pretty (mostly until I have to walk around in it) but I am a cold weather person by nature. Come summer time, I’m shit out of luck. That’s just the way it is.

Summer makes me feel sad and alone. I am neither of those things! But there you have it. I want to love summer like the rest of you! But I just can’t. I have to hide from it, if I know what’s good for me, because it’s just not for me. I cannot bear it. I’ve had more rando sobbing going on this past week or so that it’s started to worry even me. I don’t do that kind of thing! Apparently, now I do. I’ve started to feel like a prisoner in my own home and it’s not even mid-July! I’ve got a whole lotta days to get through where I can’t be just walking around sobbing like a lunatic.

But then miracles happen! And the weather breaks. Take today, for example. It’s practically perfect in every way. It’s sunny. It’s warm. But it’s not humid, in fact, feast your eyes on this beautiful weather graphic:

A dew point of 48 makes my heart soar! I can leave the house! I can do the things! All the things!

Except for that I really can’t.

I can do a few little things. Like late breakfasting with my brother and mother where I got to drive to Bob Evan’s with the top down. Then I got to stroll through Target in search of an area rug that won’t actually try to kill me. And then right about at the check out line, I started to feel my legs crapping out. I kind of wished I already had my fancy new rollator because I might have plopped myself down right there just to take a little rest. My mom and I drove back to my house with the top down again, my brother stopped by to help me carry my parcels in my house (thank god because squid legs had commenced and there was no way I could have done it myself).

And now that my little summertime running around has ended I find myself here:

Catching up on some work and writing this ponderously long blog post to share with you all, while sitting outside! On the porch. Not sweating from my eyes! Just feeling a little achy but nothing too terrible. I’m enjoying this  little thing. This little thing called decent weather.

So there’s the epiphany I promised so many words ago!

The next time the summer heat and sunshine makes me want to cry until my eyes empty my body of all liquid, I will remember that the weather will eventually break. And when it does, I can rollate myself where I want to go, if I want to go anywhere at all, because let’s face it, this porch doesn’t suck.

I will remember that nothing is forever and tiny increments are still better(ish). I will at the very least try. Because that’s what we do.