[Updates: where I’ve been & where I’m heading]
I’ve virtually disappeared off the internet for some months, and after some consideration I decided to try to make a comeback.
I stopped posting because, if I’m completely honest, my life turned on its head without any warning signs, and for a while I was completely lost, hopeless and falling into a very depressive state of being. I’ve spent these months trying to collect what I had left, making sense of what was to come. I’ve basically had to reinvent myself, build myself again. Oh how many times I’ve lifted myself back up on my feet.
Enough with trying to make everything poetic, it has been horrible – that kind of horrible which makes you feel like your life has nothing left in it to fight for. I’m still in the middle of it all, but I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands and move on. I’ve let this halt my life for far too long already, and I’ve had enough. Of course I can’t really make myself better, but I can keep on living even though it feels like the whole world is against me.
At the end of summer, everything took a turn for the worse. I started noticing small physical changes in my body – my hair had started falling out, my skin acted weird, and there was a lump in my throat making it difficult to focus on studying for my finals. I was still posting, but I had to take a step back and slow down because my own body was telling me to.
And with that, the seemingly endless cycle began: worried, I went to see a doctor, who would tell me it was either my imagination, or stress, or something psychological (a favourite amongst doctors seems to be to blame it all on my depression, from which, by the way, I’ve been recovering for the past three years with great success). I would turn to the internet (I know, bad habit but if professionals weren’t gonna solve it, I had to do something myself) in hopes of finding answers – mostly to no avail. Everything became a guessing game – I knew that my depression wasn’t the core cause, nor stress (alone, at least). After some time, I managed to distract myself and calm down, believing it was going to get better. Then, all of the sudden, I would develop new symptoms, and the cycle would repeat: worry, doctors, belittling, a spark of hope.
Amidst all of this, I had to withdraw from my finals. It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made, but with an invisible illness and a body hindering everything I do would mean I wouldn’t be able to give it my best. I really haven’t seen any improvement in my physical condition, even though I’ve tried nearly everything I can come up with for now. I’ve been ready to give up more times than I can count, and I’m not proud of it. I’ve been in pain every single day since I got sick, whether that is physical or mental. But I’ll keep fighting – I owe myself that.
It’s funny how life can change in an instant. In hindsight, I wish I had not taken my health for granted, because I’ve been recklessly destroying my body for years, and perhaps that mistreatment has contributed to me getting ill. But I can’t know for sure. The hardest part about being sick and not knowing why is how unpredictable it makes living. One second you’re perfectly content and fine – the next, you’re in a hospital bed crying because of the pain in your stomach. Yet no-one takes you seriously. It feels lonely.
It’s the end of February now, and I feel a bit more at ease mentally, though I’m quite emotionally unstable and stressed. I’ve accepted that this is my life now, and I just have to run with it and do my best. I’m still losing hair all over my body, my muscles feel weak and sore and my back is constantly trying to murder me. Although my symptoms are even more severe than they were last fall (when I was supposed to take my finals), I am taking three finals – math, english and biology – in a few weeks. I’m scared, but more than that, I feel excited.
There’s another part to the story too. I fell in love – with the wrong person (wow, such a teenager moment). Unrequited love is a classic, but no-one is going to deny the havoc it induces in young, naive hearts. Partially, it has been a saving grace – without it I would have not come so far, because being in love is undoubtedly one of the most wondrous feelings on the planet. To be completely honest, I’ve been in love for most of my time in high school, but when everything else started falling apart, I began to seek solace in the person I love, which, in turn, strengthened my feelings more. Why she was the ‘wrong person’ will remain a secret, but in a way I’m still glad it was her and not someone else – because she happens to be quite unanimously amazing, and has supported me in my battles more than anyone else. However, something changed and now this situation brings me more anxiety than I can handle, and it has been a long way coming trying to sort it out. We went from being in great speaking-terms to barely speaking at all (just to clear things up, I understood from point one that she would never reciprocate my feelings, so I had always hoped to become friends with her, which has now started to feel like an impossibility).
I’m not sure how often I’ll be active, but I think of this as a therapy session of sorts. Be warned, however, because as I (hopefully) continue updating, some of it might be depressing. Here’s to new beginnings and being productive!
