I never put much thought to the sick.
The chronically ill, the lethally injured, those living off of life support. Like most people, I knew of it, and unlike most people, I did research as a wannabe doctor. Starry eyed and shooting as high as I could, because I had been given the luxury, the privilege of reaching decently high.
When I was 14, when I had been suspended from track, I had thought I had some bad UTI. I had only been to the ER once, when I was 3, I shoved a bead up my nose. Nasal exploration. Fun times.
It never occurred to me, truly, what sickness could look like. How different it can appear for so many. Sure, I read, but there’s only so much one can experience in passages, textbooks, research papers.
It’s the same way for a lot of people too, I think. Like when my fatigue sunk in so much more, that it was such a burden for me to get up to get the door for my Spanish class, my freshman year.
“Can you get the door for me?” I’d asked to the guy beside me, “I’m sick.”
I’m incredibly dense, but far from an idiot, because judging by the snickers I heard, nobody believed me. I wasn’t coughing, I wasn’t sneezing, I didn’t have a hospital bracelet on my wrist and I wasn’t hairless. I appeared in optimal health, to anyone who passed me by.
I got the door myself, every time, for the rest of the year. Nobody believed me.
It wasn’t until all the potential futures I could’ve led up to- a college scholarship for throwing, weightlifting in my free time, that those possibilities were ripped away from me. That when the diagnosis that hung in front of me never sunk in, until almost a year later.
So many appointments. So many results that just ended with more medications shoved my way, because there’s nothing else left for me to do. My adolescence, gone, in one fell swoop. That it will never go away.
And I guess, while a diagnosis offers closure, it also offers a mourning of what you could’ve had. It also demonstrates what people just assume out of you, especially to those young and unfortunately sick, “you’re so young, you’ll understand what pain feels like when you’re older,” Being shoved my way, when I take more medications than my grandpa.
Even clinicians sweep me aside. My own “friends”. And I’ve never pleaded more to be sick, to show my sickness, for a break. Or perhaps to just further the belief that I am valid in my struggle, and so many others are, because I am not lazy.
Diabetics are also chronically ill, you do realize.
It is physically exhausting. Just because something is so common, so normalized, doesn’t mean it holds any less weight. Just because you may see it frequently doesn’t necessarily make it less dreadful for those that suffer. Just because someone appears in optimal health does not invalidate their struggle. You do not have to be diabetic to understand, I’m not, and I try. I make an effort.
But I guess the only way to truly understand is to be sick, or to listen, and many people do neither.
It’s not even been a year. And I’m already used to it.
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