The thing is, I’m really not sorry. I mean I am sorry but I don’t want to be sorry. I wish I could stop myself from feeling sorry because it’s a craptastic way to feel all of the time but it appears to be completely out of my control.

I just realized my constant state of sorry recently. I was texting back and forth with my sister. The reason why I was sorry isn’t really relevant here but I had asked her to do something kind of big for me, which she did, and then it turned out I didn’t really need the thing I’d asked her to do at all. That’s when the apologies started.

“I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I just did that.”

“It’s ok. You don’t have anything to be sorry about. It’s no thang.”

“But it is and I feel terrible. I feel so bad. Ugh. I’m so sorry.”

This went on back and forth for a bit before my sister sent me this:

“You and this guilt! No guilt! Let it go.”

That’s when it hit me. How incredibly, overwhelmingly, obnoxiously sorry I’ve been for the longer than I can even remember.

I hit my three-year MSversary back on December 1. I didn’t start out so sorry back at my diagnosis. I was more angry than sorry. I still hadn’t gotten hit with the full force of this downhill slalom so I don’t remember feeling so apologetic back then. I was defiant. I refused help because most of the time I didn’t need it. I was committed to retaining my big independent life and no goddamned disease was going to change any of that. Fuck MS. I wasn’t going to let it change me.

Fast forward. Relapse after relapse. Failed drug after failed drug. Hearing The Great Scott sound perplexed when he referred to my aggressive disease and feeling more and more desperate. When I got my first cane, that’s when things started to get hinky. People could see me struggling, yeah, but using a cane is like wearing a sandwich board that says, “Not entirely in control of my limbs.” People noticed, how could they not? Some of those people would offer to help me. Hold a door open. Carry a bag. Give me a ride. Deliver lunch to my desk. All very nice things for which I would express my sincere gratitude. Then the cane transitioned to the trekking poles. Now I had two hands engaged in the act of holding my body erect which signals to people in the outside world that I might be even more likely to face plant at any second. More offers of help. More gratitude. All good.

As I started to feel worse, as my ability seemed to disappear before my very eyes, my mobility devices got more substantial and my contrite, apologetic obsession did too. Working outside of my home got much more difficult. My ability to put on a good normal act started to get harder and frankly, I started to focus on somehow holding on to the bare minimum of normal so other things changed too. I started dressing very simply. I used to wear a lot of color, curated every outfit like a paid stylist. I changed my bag to match my outfit. I coordinated jewelry and makeup like I was creating art every morning. When your body is failing you, there are so many reasons why these things change. I mean, I don’t know that they change for everyone. I see you all out there wearing jeans and coordinated outfits and looking amazing. I just don’t have it in me anymore. I only want to be comfortable. I only want to get out the door with parts covered and looking moderately put together. For me, this means black on black on black. Lots of leggings. Lots of tunic sweaters. Eileen Fisher is my go-to designer. 40-year-old me is somewhere gagging and tsk’ing at me to get my fashion shit together. Forty-year-old me was very judgmental.

Then I started out with less jewelry – no more carefully coordinated mismatched pieces intended to look effortless and cool but were actually anything but. I simplified by sticking with the same armful of bracelets. The same stack of rings that I’ve worn every day since I had them made from my wedding rings way back when I got tired of people asking me what my husband did (sometimes I would just say, “Oh…not much.” Just to freak people out but that’s another story). I’d slip on the same oversized watch that brings instant cool to any ensemble.

More recently I just gave all of that up entirely. My fingers are perennially swollen from steroids and various other medications and just a few extra pounds because shit. I can barely move half the time. Of course I’m fat. Even if I get my rings on in the morning by the end of the day my sausage fingers aren’t loving being stuck in my fancy jewels. Who needs bracelets? I mean, let’s just focus on getting out the door. My new uniform only includes my small collection of tiny stud earrings. I don’t even take them out! I sleep in my diamonds. Like Joan Collins must do, or so I tell myself.

When I make it to where-ever I might be going, which is usually my office or someone else’s office for a meeting or some such because those are pretty much the only places I go anymore, the apologizing usually begins.

I’m sorry I look a fright. I’m sorry I’m probably not even clean. I’m really sorry that I am bumping into things with my ever-more-complex stable of mobility aids. I’m sorry you had to wait while I drag my dead legs across the street in front of your car glaring at me from behind the wheel. I tell the valet I’m sorry I need help getting my heavy rollator out of the trunk. I tell the front desk security lady that I’m sorry she had to turn the handicapped accessible entry door on for me because sometimes it gets stuck open and she gets chilly so she turns it off. I’m super sorry that you had to open the door for me, front desk lady.

If you happen to be walking behind me and I can feel your damn breath on the back of my neck (this happens a lot in the outside world), I apologize after I stop and tell you to please go around me because I walk slow. If there is a situation where I’ve had to ask you to push my fat ass in a wheelchair, to a meeting say when it’s really hot outside, I will apologize so many times even I will feel uncomfortable. When Pam brings me lunch or fills my water bottle or walks me to my car with an umbrella so I don’t get drenched on my way to my car…I usually say thank you first but immediately after the thanks are expressed, here comes the sorry.

This whole state of constant sorry even leaks into my work life. I apologize constantly for what I can’t do. I ask people in email if what I’m suggesting is OK. I apologize for making people talk to me on the phone because everyone hates talking on the fucking phone anymore but it’s really important to me because I’m SO SORRY but I can’t be there in person and I need to maintain some semblance of professional relevance so I force myself to call and not email because it helps people to remember that I’m an actual person but I’m so, so very sorry for it.

After a recent client meeting during a happy hour sort of thing where people stand around and chat, I had to sit on Nitro because my legs would literally not let me stand for one more minute. Mingling with work colleagues while seated at crotch level is really weirdly awkward but I insist that you stand because I don’t want you to go out of your way for me. One of the new people I met during this meeting pulled up a chair and sat near me so we could chat eye-to-eye. Guess what I said to him before we even got into talking excitedly about the potential business impact of our extremely cool data-driven marketing evolution that we’d been meeting about a little earlier? “I’m so sorry. You didn’t have to sit down.”

When you come to visit me, I will apologize for not getting up to open the door. I will apologize again when I offer you water to drink (water??? Yep, I have water). I will apologize for my house not being clean and for the clutter that is my strategically placed furniture and mobility aids that keep me on my feet even in my own home. I will apologize (again) for being in pajamas, without makeup on, without so much as a bracelet, and definitely without a bra.

“I’m sorry” is on the tip of my tongue and it tumbles out even when I don’t know it’s coming. Then there it is. Sitting on the table or floating in the air like an uncomfortable whiff of something not quite pleasant that nobody wants to acknowledge but everyone smells it.

There was this thing that went around social media lately, the ten-year challenge. You had to see it, it was all over the place. Post your first-ever Facebook profile pic and your most recent profile pic. Of course I did it because…well, I’m me. When I scrolled through the profile pics from my early days on Facebook, back before any of this madness started, I noticed how different I looked but it wasn’t because I’m older now or gained a few pounds or changed my colorful wardrobe to basic black. It was my eyes! I could see in my eyes how not sorry I was back then. I wasn’t even remotely sorry because I was probably just finished doing something for someone else or solving some problem or other. I was the helper not the help-ee. I was the inspirational leader who oozed confidence. I probably should have been sorrier, more often back then but I wasn’t. I was sure. I was happy. I wasn’t always happy, don’t get it twisted, but I wasn’t sorry.

My more recent pictures are mostly pictures I take of myself because she’s who I usually spend most of my time around. I do my best not to look as sorry as I feel but you can see it in my eyes in pretty much every selfie that I’m so incredibly sorry that I take up space. That I need your help. That I have to ask for special treatment. That I can’t just go with the flow. And the worst thing I’m sorry for? I can no longer jump right into whatever situation is unfolding in my life and make it better. I can’t insert myself into a work dilemma and instantly solve the problem. I can’t say “I’ll be there” without the risk of being a goddamned liar so now I say, “I’ll do my best to be there but please understand if I’m not.” Sometimes I can’t even say that. And I’m really sorry for that.

I am tired of being so sorry.

When I’m advocating for myself with my health care providers, I’m not sorry. When I’m sticking up for my rights as a newly disabled person and faced with challenges to getting what I require for my new life, I’m not sorry. When I’m fighting with an insurance company or a drug company or negotiating with The Great Scott and ENC, I’m never, ever sorry. It’s like I turn into old capable professional Beth and pull out all the stops. I can be downright intimidating in those situations. Sometimes I have to check myself so that I’m not actually scaring people with my attitude. When I’m operating in the world of the disabled, I am never ever sorry.

It seems my regrets are centered firmly on those situations when I’m in my old world, trying to do my old-world things and needing a little extra help or consideration that I never needed before. Then I’m so sorry I can’t stand myself. I’m so sorry you can see it in my expertly lined eyes through the lens of the basic iPhone camera. My perfectly groomed eyebrows won’t even be able to distract you from how sorry I am. I’m so sorry I don’t even want to meet you somewhere fun in the outside world, even if I could, because I won’t have fun. I’ll be too busy feeling sorry for you, for me, for the sorry state of my current life and for the fact that I can never, ever just be. I’ll be so sorry the whole time I won’t have room for anything else.

I am a walking act of contrition.

My beloved therapist Cheryl would tell me to use some good old cognitive behavioral therapy techniques and just stop being sorry for myself by pretending that I’m not. She would tell me to get my words right and to stop the constant inner talk track around what a pathetic shadow of the person I used to be that I have somehow become. She would also tell me that I just put my body through a very drastic and serious treatment from which I am still recovering and beating myself up constantly is not the best kind of self-care and self-care is what I need right now plain and simple. Cheryl is very wise.

Fake it ‘til you make it, BBAD. Love means never having to say you’re sorry, or so said Ali McGraw in one of my all-time favorite films and it’s time I remember who needs my love the most right now. That would be me.