Uncensored

Part 4

We got married because we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together. Or, as we both knew, the rest of his life.

We had gotten better at first, giving us some time, but you can't cure MS (yet. Though he is still waiting.) and he has been on the same medications now for many years. People at home always ask me how he is doing, but how do you answer that? He is fine, but that doesn't mean he isn't getting worse, too. MS, the kind he has, is slow and steady. It messes with his gait, he can't walk long distances, and his left body side is much weaker than his right. Hot temperatures are debilitating and his body stops functioning. I have memories of situations that still give me nightmares. MS isn't pretty.
But MS is even harder on my husband's mind than on his body. To a soldier his body is everything. For almost 10 years my husband was hiding his disease while serving in the military, ashamed at how his body failed him, hating it. Every minute of every day he hates and fights with his body. He tirelessly works out and challenges himself to be in the best possible shape he can be- yet he has to accept getting weaker. I know that he will not be able to run after our kids, he knows he won't play soccer with them, and we both know he will still go with a gun to his head one day. He will not give up his dignity to become completely disabled.

Every day I work on giving him more reasons to keep going and to keep living. My labor is carrying fruits- when he would have never even uttered the word 'cane' a couple years ago, now he will quietly, with pained eyes, admit that he will need one someday. And he stopped talking about suicide a long time ago. I made him promise that he would try therapy when he got to that point again, before he would be allowed to go.

However, he never understood that his MS was now my problem, too, that it is my pain, too. He thinks it is his problem that he has to deal with alone. He doesn't know that I'm the one awake and worrying, I'm the one caring for him, and I'm the one picking up the pieces.

He never lied to me though, I knew what I was getting myself into. It's like being fully aware and awake and taking a step into racing traffic. I took that step.
Before we got married he tried to talk me out of it. I told him the truth: that I loved him and I wanted to spend my life with him, every minute he had.

If anything, I'm loyal. I made a promise years ago, I made a promise to never leave him, and I will never break that promise.
I chose him, and I'll choose him over and over and over. Without pause, without a doubt, in a heartbeat. I'll keep choosing him.
When he gave me my ring, it was engraved with I live for you. It's not romantic when we both know it's the truth.

Sometimes I ask myself whether I regret the decision to stay, whether I regret choosing him. But I realize that it was not one choice, but was many small choices, many small moments, until one day the choice had been made. Or then again, maybe I just never had a choice. When I still could have left, when I still could have returned to Germany and turned my back on him, my heart didn't give me a choice. There was no pause, no thought, no choice. I knew what I wanted to do with every fiber of my being. So it's unfair to ask if I regret any of this. I get very offended when I feel that people are implying this, too. And I'm always very vehement that I don't. If I know one thing, it's that I don't regret any of it. I would do it again, everything. But that doesn't change, that I miss Germany with my entire being and that I miss my family every day so much that it hurts.

Sometimes people get confused about that, so I have generally learned that I should not express any negative feelings about living in the U.S. and having left Germany. Because I'm living the American Dream after all. And mostly because when you make a choice like that, you better make the right one, and then be happy with it. Somehow you lose the right to be unhappy because everyone immediately thinks you're "regretting" something- why does it always have be about regret?
I was once asked about what I thought was the biggest waste of time. And I answered: regret. That doesn't mean there aren't things that I regret, and I think it's important to learn from one's choices, but regret is a waste of time. We cannot change the past and as long as we regret, we cannot move on (and do better).

Sometimes, very rarely, I dare to think I made the wrong choice. And guess what? That thought is the least helpful ever- so much so that it is completely worthless. It could be true, but there is no way for me to know how my life could have turned out if I had chosen a different path.

I don't even know if there are right choices. I know there are choices, and we live with them. Sometimes they are impossible to make, yet we do. And in that moment, they are the right choices. Mistakes are never made on purpose. So instead of questioning what we have done, we should focus on what we will do: right now, tomorrow, in a year. So I don't waste my time with regret.