Walking

There’s nothing a long walk can’t fix. That’s truly something I swear by. There is no funk, no slump, no spiral that a long walk cannot soothe. Time, space, air, quiet – they are all ingredients for my most recent necessities of peace, perspective, and calm.

I do often fear the day that I can’t take them and relish in their peace, benefit from their freedom.

Physical disability isn’t something I suffer from and, though it feels odd to say, I’m appreciative that I currently have an invisible component to my disease. I hope it stays that way. But that doesn’t mean the anxiety of what could be isn’t constantly circling overhead, especially on mornings where I wake up with two legs that feel as heavy as sandbags.

Sometimes getting caught in the what ifs of the future overwhelms me to the point where I have nowhere to retreat to except the present. Yes, there could be a day where I’m older and these long walks I love so much aren’t easy. So – I’ll take them while I can, dwell in their calm while I feel it, and soak in their offerings while I’m still invited to take part.

One day, where I might only be able to go a short distance, I will still find refuge in those moments, no matter how short or long. I will still feel my shoulders fall and my chest rise. I will still feel my mind calm and my view widen as I see the sky and smell the ocean. It will be a new normal, a new capacity, and a new distance. But then again, that just sounds like what adapting to every phase of life looks like, MS aside. 

Sometimes it feels like receiving a diagnosis with MS kickstarted my processing and conversations around the big feelings, buried tensions, and uncomfortable topics that I would inevitably face down the road: identity, authenticity, purpose, family planning, financial stability, self-advocacy, aging, afterlife, etc. It has felt like a crashing wave, one after the other, of each question, each insecurity, each fear confronting me over the last (almost) two years. It’s not that MS is a death sentence and you have to quickly get your life in order but it presents a reality that life is not something you can predict, and that in itself stirs up a lot of discomfort towards the things that you initially thought you were entitled to, that you thought you didn’t ever have to question.

My long walks are where I work through those feelings and questions, where I piece together how to ride these waves. It’s after these long walks that I feel like the waves turn from tsunamis into slow tides. I can sit on the shoreline with an open mind, open heart, and open eyes to the life around me, still existing, still moving, still growing, still inviting. The questions come and go, the anxieties rise and fall, and I come back to the now, one foot in front of the other - being ok with both a nervousness of the future and gratitude for the present. I know it’s ok to feel both.