Teen Mom is filled to the brim with sadness, right?
All kinds of sadness too — we’ve seen children be neglected, we’ve seen the parents deal with drug addiction and domestic violence and prison.
But there’s one story that pretty much takes the sadness cake when it comes to this show, and that’s the story of Leah Messer’s daughter, Ali.
Ali is one of the twins Leah had as a teenager, and she suffers from a rare form of muscular dystrophy.
On the show, we’ve seen Leah and Ali’s father, Corey Simms, struggle to figure out what was wrong with Ali, and we saw how heartbreaking it was when they realized how serious her condition is.
We’ve seen them be told time and time again that she needs to use her wheelchair and to wear a helmet and to get help, and we’ve seen them slacking on that so she could have a more “normal” childhood.
It’s the nature of Ali’s condition that as time goes on, the disease will get worse and worse. We can’t even imagine how difficult it must be to watch from Leah’s perspective.
But thanks to this ridiculously tragic story she shared on Twitter, we can get a little glimpse of it.
“As I’m doing Ali girls makeup she looks at me and says ‘Mom, what’s it like to see with two eyes?’ …” she wrote.
“Everyday I wish I could take her place but I know there’s a greater purpose!” she added. “Just broke my heart.”
… Ouch.
Way back when Ali and Gracie were toddlers, Leah began noticing that there was something wrong with Ali’s eyes and legs — those were the first signs of her disease.
Since then, Ali’s been wearing glasses, and now it’s clear that she’s not even able to see out of one eye.
As Leah explained after this initial tweets, “this is the first time she’s asked” anything about her eyes, and “she’s starting to ask a lot of questions like this.”
Thankfully though, Leah seems to have a good attitude about it all.
Someone told her that Ali loves her life and she wouldn’t even want to switch places with Leah — which, yeah, obviously, it’s not like Leah was proposing a Freaky Friday scheme.
“Ohh for sure!!” she replied. “I don’t think of it negatively at all. It’s just like, dayyyyuum. Sooo many take the little things in life for granted.”
She also retweeted a bunch of nice messages about Ali.
Things like “You continue to do everything you can for her and your love for her shines. Some days are tough, but always focus on her smile and cherish every memory.”
And also “She will be phenomenal because of her struggles. She will not struggle in vain. She has purpose. Purpose to overcome and live a beautiful life.”
Thanks for the good, hard cry, Leah!
