Who's going down, you or me?

"Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place and it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t how hard you hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done."

I am never inspired from movies but...
This quote left a profound impression on me.

In the past 3 years, I was diagnosed with MS, I faced problems with my family, I almost took my own life, isolation, and so on.

It was a tough run, but I was able to reach a sort of "armistice" with these problems. I was neither in complete despair nor was I trying to be optimistic. I couldn't let all this "ugliness" drag me to hell, but I also couldn't truly feel happy in life due to the weight of these problems.

This was how I dragged on with life for the past 2 years. "Things will get better and that's when you'll be able to be free from this weight." This was what I lived on. I thought simple endurance was going to get me through. I always thought, "who's going down, you or me?"

Then as 2015 arrived, I noticed that this mentality of just enduring the weight was... not good enough. I felt on the edge, just one tiny push and I could end up in despair again. I was unconsciously speaking in pessimistic terms and the people around me seemed to not want to be around my negativity.

That's when I heard this quote from Rocky and it was time for me to change.

I was focusing too much on "getting hit" and was just taking the hit. I wasn't trying to move on with my life but just simply fighting with the past. My life was being defined not by me but by my pains and fears. I needed to move on.

As patients haunted by this horrible specter known as MS, we need to advance away from all the suffering caused by MS and advance forward. I will keep moving on so that MS cannot define my life.