The Green Couch

It started with tingling in my fingers and toes.

I was 24 years old and living in Los Angeles with one of my girlfriends.

And I was the healthiest I'd ever been in my adult life.

I had a job as an online customer service rep at an office in downtown L.A.  After work, I'd walk the 45 minutes back to my apartment, change into my workout clothes, and go straight to the gym.  Five days a week.  I began reading about vegetarianism and was slowly incorporating more meatless foods into my diet.  Having left all of my old drinking buddies in Boston, I cut WAY back on the alcohol and weed and didn't even miss 'em.  As lonely as I often was, I was happy.

Until my fingers and toes started tingling and I couldn't figure out why.

After a few weeks of these symptoms I began to develop a low level of panic that was with me round the clock.  And then, one day, I had a seizure at work.  Two days later I was diagnosed with relasping remitting Multiple Sclerosis.  I knew absolutely nothing about MS except that the only other person I knew who had this disease was confined to a wheelchair.  With no other examples around me, I assumed that was my fate as well.

I moved back to Boston the day after my diagnosis.

And fell apart.

I'm blessed enough to have had the same best friends my entire life.  Within a year of moving back home, I left my mother's house and moved in with one of my lifelong girlfriends, Maggie.

Originally from Portugal, Maggie didn't come to our school until 6th grade but when she did, I was instantly enamored with her.  She had endless amounts of energy.  She was bigger than life.  While I shyly stayed on the outskirts of whatever recess activity was taking place at hoyt field that day, Maggie played sports with the boys like she was born to do nothing else.  She'd go home with ripped jeans and dirty knees and a grin on her face that let me know she didn't care about such trivialities.

She was fearless.

We did everything together.  Rode bikes together after school, went to the mall together on weekends, and after my diagnosis, she sat with me on her green couch for MONTHS and let me cry.

Eventually, I began to put my life back together again. I started seeing a psychiatrist who put me on antidepressants, taught me to meditate and bore witness to my pain, week after week, in her tiny closet of an office.

Amazed at the way therapy was helping me heal myself, I went back to school and studied psychology.

I found a job I adored, rejoined the gym, and became a full-fledged vegetarian.

Several years later, when my father died, I was grateful for having had the experience of being diagnosed with MS.  This time around, I knew exactly what to do.  Go straight to therapy, keep working out, get back on Celexa should the depression become overwhelming again. Journal, talk to my friends and family. Don't even try to go it alone.

And together, my family and I got through the loss.

But losing Lorenzo has been an entirely different experience.  For the first time since my diagnosis, I fell apart again.  For weeks I only got off of the couch for Amira.  I'd get up to take her to school, get up to pick her back up again. Get up to take her to swim class, or hip hop, or drama or to the museum.  But when I wasn't getting up for Amira, I wasn't getting up at all.  I no longer had the physical energy to walk the two feet from my couch to my ellipical machine, let alone actually go to the gym.  I drank lots of wine and ate LOTS of potato chips.  I watched ESPN non stop.  But it still took me a solid ten months to realize that I needed help again.  Three weeks ago I was on the phone with a complete stranger, when I began to cry and I couldn't stop.  I called my doctor right away and he greeted me with a hug, a referral to the therapist in his office, and a prescription for prozac.

And it's working.  In the three weeks since that breakdown/breakthrough I've started working out again.  Started eating salad again.  Started feeling like myself again.  But I know that I'm at the beginning of a really long journey.

I have to come up with a whole new life for myself and for my daughter and I have NO CLUE where to start.

And here's the thing...I'm not supposed to be writing this post right now.

My plan was to create a brand new blog AFTER I "got over" the pain of losing Lorenzo.  I wanted to be the "after" photo in all of the before and after makeover stories we see on tv and in the magazines.  You know the ones.  Girl meets boy, girl and boy fall in love.  Girl sits on her ever increasing ass for ten months after boy is killed by piece of shit drunk driver and girl no longer knows what to do with herself so she eats and drinks and watches tv to numb herself from the pain.  Well, I was going to start a blog AFTER this phase had ended.  AFTER I had gotten all better and could be a shining example to others that there is in fact life and joy and happiness AFTER your entire world has ended.

But that blog is bullshit.  Who gives a shit about the after?  Maybe, just maybe, somebody out there needs to hear my story NOW.  Maybe somebody needs to hear about what a struggle it is to get up day after day, knowing you will never hear your partner's voice thundering down the hallway ever again.  Maybe somebody out there is going through this too and we can go through it together.  We can get off of the green couch together, just like Maggie and I did almost 20 years ago when I was just diagnosed and was more afraid of a wheelchair than I was of death.

I'm no longer interested in the AFTER anymore.  I'm interested in the now.  I'm interested in today.  I'm interested in finding a way off of the couch and sharing my story with you because today's the day I have.  Not tomorrow.  I'm not the after photo, I didn't lose Lorenzo and become so inspired by his legacy that I became a raw foods, vegan, marathon runner with 10% body fat.  No, I lost Lorenzo and couldn't get up for ten months but I'm here now.  And I'm inviting you to go on this journey with me.