I will never forget the day I was hit with the realization that my body had betrayed me.

It was an afternoon last October, when I stood, looking at the stage at HMAC, and realized that I couldn’t climb the 5 steps to get onto it without falling over, because there was no handrail and I was too unsteady on my feet to do it without my friend Eric holding both of my hands on the way up and again on the way down.

After that rehearsal, I went home and I cried myself to sleep.

If you have interacted with me at all, you’ve probably picked up on the fact that I have a pretty non-stop personality. I want to see everything, and do everything, and go everywhere, and experience as much life as I possibly can. Part of that drive is because I’m a giant, crazed extravert with an adventurous streak, but what I don’t tell people is that the main reason I feel like I need to do everything and do it now is because I don’t know what my future will look like….or if I’ll even have one….so I have to pack as much life as I can into the here and now.

Until 2001, I was a perfectly healthy young woman. I royally was terrible at basically all sports, but I could dance like nobody’s business. I was a performer — had a 6 week internship working for Disney as a dancing cupcake in their Beauty and the Beast show at MGM in Orlando — marched in a band at the Macy’s Parade and the Rose Parade, and then I packed myself up and moved to NYC. I was on a path to what I thought was living my best life.

And then in what seemed like an instant, everything changed.

I was diagnosed with Systemic Lupus, reactive airway disease, and a type of relapsing and remitting MS.

It was a terrifying time. Things were happening in and to my body that were out of my control. My body…my body that I’d always thought I was in charge of, that I controlled….was now a problem.  A serious one.

There’s something that happens to a person when they’re confronted with their own fragility, with the prospect that they aren’t going to be here forever. At least that’s been my experience. Some things feel more urgent. Other things lose their importance. Anxiety can rear its head in a big way. And, on that day at HMAC, when I came face to face with the idea that my body had betrayed me, I had to finally accept the reality that, no matter how hard I want it, how much I push, how stubbornly I resist, that I simply can’t control this body of mine. I have had to accept that there are just some dreams that I am not going to fulfill. Things I *won’t* accomplish. That, no matter how many fun and amazing and kind and helpful and life changing things I try to pack into this run called my life, that I am running from a dragon –and that I am trying to run in a body that doesn’t always cooperate and that can decide not to function at any given moment.

Just last week, I found myself at the ER before dawn with my body again beyond my control, and it was terrifying.  After a day’s worth of tests and observation, they let me go home, chalking it up to just the way my body is sometimes. I walked out of the Carlisle hospital on my own two legs, still scared, but grateful to be alive.

That’s the takeaway, for me, at the end of the day.  At the end of every day. Profound, deep, deep gratitude. I may be running from a dragon, but I am so thankful to be running.

My body betrays me in new ways all the time, but it is still MINE, and I’m learning to appreciate it for what it CAN do instead of resent it for what it can’t. And that’s a hard lesson to learn. There are days when I see my friends dancing and singing their hearts out on stage and I am JEALOUS. I want to be up there with them. I want to do all those things that I used to be able to do that now, I just…can’t.

It’s in those moments, those times when I’m feeling the most resentful, the most frustrated, the most ashamed of my body that I need to remember what my body CAN do. I can still walk. I can still write. I can still play with my nephews and Lisa’s nieces. I can cheer and shout and clap and hug my friends after their shows. I can still carry signs and show up to protests and speak out against injustice.  I can still LOVE.  I can be proud of what my body has done in the past, and what it can still do today, because it is mine.

I am grateful every day that my partner sees me for who I am, and that she reminds me that she LOVES me – not in spite of my body, but that she loves all of me, INCLUDING this body I live in, just as it is, quirks and all.  And on days when I am so frustrated, when I lament all the things I used to do, and I can’t remember how to love myself, she’s there to hold that space, reminding me of all that I am and can be.

Most days now, I look at this fragile, badly-behaved, out-of-the-norm body, and I can see it for what it is. It is a record of my life. Every scar, every lump, every discolored patch of skin…every inch of me tells part of my story, is part of who I am. My body may be imperfect, but it is mine. It is what is carrying me on this run through life. And it’s okay that sometimes I struggle to make peace with the fact that I can’t control it, no matter how hard I try. I am learning, even as I run, to be proud of it, to be proud of ME.

My body is part of ME.

And it is so worthy of love for that alone.