When I Fell in Love After Years of Battling MS

The other day I fell in love with a girl.

They say love happens in the most random ways and this couldn’t have been any more random. I woke up one day and there she was. This incredibly beautiful girl that smiled at me and made my heart skip a beat or two. She looked so happy and so at peace and she made me want to be close to her all the time, so I, too, could partake in that energy she exuded.

I don’t know if it was her dark hair or her long legs. Maybe it was her round big eyes. Or it could’ve been her smile. Or maybe it was the fact that I could read her mind. And in that mind, she was so gracious and kind. At peace with herself, I could tell she was at peace with everyone else as well. Don’t get me wrong, I could see the pain she has endured and I could see the battles she has fought. Fighting to find a cure for her dis-ease and her diseased body, I could tell she had gotten stronger and more compassionate over the years. I could also see inside her heart, and no matter how damaged her heart had been in the past, that made her love even more. Her heart, in a desperate move to recreate itself and heal, had found a way to see all the beauty in the world. Her legs, in an attempt to heal their damaged nerves, struggled in yoga poses done easily by others without her condition. But this girl, she fought. She fought hard to not let this or anything else stop her.

Her heart longed to find that other heart equivalent to hers, and I knew mine was the one. I just wanted to cradle her in my arms and tell her everything is going to be OK, that as long as she looked in my eyes, her life would be full of love and happiness. I knew this from the bottom of my heart and I wanted her to know this. Somehow, she looked back at me and I could tell she got it. She was, of course, hesitant. After years and years of looking after others, was it time for someone to look after her? Her big, dark, beautiful eyes stared at me and questioned whether they were, in fact, seeing what they saw. I could tell that she needed me, and I her.

From that moment on, I knew I would be with her for the rest of my life and I would take care of her and love her like no one else will ever be able to do. From that moment on I realized we were stuck together forever and the only thing we could do was be kind to each other, treat each other with respect and that together we would never be lonely. Together we would conquer the world and together we would laugh all the way to that magical time when one chapter ends and another begins.

The only way for us to survive is to treat each other kindly, to find the humor in the oddest things and to cry as much as we want over anything we want as well as scream, yell, laugh for whatever reason. But we have to do this together.

The other day I fell in love with this strong, beautiful and amazing woman and I realized that she is who she is because of all the happiness, pain, illness, loss, accomplishments and hurdles she has gone through.

The other day, I fell in love with me.