It’s my last days of being 27, and I’ve not been in a great place recently. It’s not easy to articulate my thoughts and emotions, but I’m going to try because sometimes when I give the contents of my tired heart a place to rest on the page it helps me to feel a bit lighter.
I used to love birthdays. It was great, having a day celebrating my life, usually surrounded by large group of friends and involving a night out and plenty of intoxicants, partying or raving, generally just enjoying being alive, coming home at sunrise, my heart full, feeling optimistic about the year ahead. And now? Well…it’s complicated.
Over the past 5 years or so as my health has gradually declined more and more, birthdays have gradually gotten harder. It’s difficult to pin down exactly what it is that makes me low and anxious around birthdays, but I’ve managed to unpack it a little during therapy. I think I struggle with being in a wildly different place in my life than what I’d hoped and what I’d worked so hard towards. Things weren’t supposed to be this way. I should be independent. I should have a career. I should have a nice place, maybe even a mortgage. I should be gradually paying into a pension pot for later in life. I should be building my life. Instead I’m completely reliant on benefits, and made to feel like a drain on the tax payer and the government. I have next to no independence. I need a carer to even meet my basic survival needs like eating enough, bathing regularly, having fresh laundry available. Things that most people do without even thinking. 95% of my energy goes into meeting those basic needs. On the rare occasion I do leave the house, I need my walker or wheelchair, and chances are it will wipe me out so much that I’ll spend a week recovering. I might never have that academic career that I worked so hard for. I feel like having a career, a mortgage and a family life, nice holidays and a social life are just things that have all been stripped away from me by chronic ill health. Nothing about turning 28 tomorrow is how it’s supposed to be.
That isn’t to say that I don’t have much in my life to be hugely greatful for, because I do. I have a roof over my head, I have food on my plate, I have income, and I have the medication that I need on a daily basis. I have parents and a partner who look after me physically and emotionally, I still have a couple of IRL friends who I keep in touch with, I have made some wonderful friends through Instagram who I speak to online regularly, and many of them are also chronically ill which means I have people to talk to who get it. I’m very well aware of the privileges I hold in this society, to the point where I feel constantly guilty for struggling with depression and anxiety. So many people have none of the support system I have. I’m also white and cis, so let’s not pretend I don’t have a tonne of unearned privilege there. I’m 100% certain that a couple of years ago when the benefit system screwed me over and I was left with no income, if it wasn’t for my parents choosing to support me, I would have been homeless, and I wouldn’t be here right now. There’s no question. Another thing I’m massively aware of is how much of a privilege it is purely to age, to be here alive and breathing. Some of the people I’ve loved in this life didn’t make it, and I know their families would give anything for them to still be here.
I know we shouldn’t compare ourselves to others. I tell that to people frequently. “Don’t compare your journey to other people’s journeys,” “our paths are all very different,” “we all grow at different speeds,” etc. I know.
And yet, I can’t ignore the heaviness of my heart and soul. I can’t pretend like birthdays aren’t massively triggering to me. I won’t put on a brave face and pretend like I’m okay, like it doesn’t kill me when I think about how different things could and should be. But there lies the complexity of human emotion, right? Pain sometimes exists within nuance rather than against a backdrop of pure misfortune.
Chronic illness is hard. It’s really, heavily difficult to deal with dozens of horrible symptoms every moment of every day. You never get a break from it. It’s hard to face a future so uncertain, and to live with the real possibility of things getting even worse, maybe even having your life cut short by it one day. It’s hard to watch the world go by from my bed, life passing me by.
So there you have it. Just a glimpse into my internal landscape on the eve of turning 28. Good things grow from the earth, but there’s no ignoring the dark clouds that cover the sky.
Of Books and Stardust 