I Don't Even Know Where to Start

I don’t even know where to start. I don’t even know what to say. This is a year’s worth of anguish, frustration, pain, and every synonym imaginable bleeding out onto a four-minute article. And that’s only one year of the rest of my life.

I think I cried nearly every night during orientation week. I just felt so physically horrible, but I had to go out and meet people anyway. I hardly ate the first few days. I vomited each morning, although that was more due to the cement bricks, they convince us are mattresses than the diagnosis that changed my life last year. I spaced out during conversations because I couldn’t focus on anything other than the pain in my abdomen. I didn’t cry because it hurt. You get used to that. I cried because I felt so, so alone. It was different back home. Everyone knew I was sick, or at least everyone important did. They knew what to do. They knew what to say. And my diagnosis didn’t define me because these people got to know me first.

I want people to get to know me first, but I need people to consciously support me when I can’t support myself. But how could I ask that of a stranger? I want to have my cake and eat it too. I want to be able to look into someone’s eyes and convey every ounce of emotion wracking through my body at any given moment.

I’d like to wake up in my body from three years ago. I forgot what it’s like to live in that body. I genuinely cannot recall what it’s like to feel great all the time. There always has to be something. If it isn’t symptoms related to my disease, it’s symptoms related to some illness I contracted since I am immune compromised. It can be something small. It can be seemingly insignificant. But there is always something.

I wonder what it would be like in the reverse as well. If you woke up feeling the way I have each day since I’ve been here, would you go to your 8:30? Would you attend class at all? Would you have gone to the health centre? The hospital? Would you cry? Would you complain? Why don’t I have the right to do these things? Maybe because if I did, I wouldn’t have time for anything else.

You reach this point of acceptance. This is your life. These are your cards. It sucks. It sucks. But what else are you to do? So, you don’t make it your life, but like I said it is your life. It’s part of it. You can’t ignore it. You can’t do anything about it either.

With a quick Google search, acceptance is defined as “the action of consenting to receive or undertake something offered.” Well, this wasn’t offered, and I didn’t consent. I’d like to offer something myself – acceptance is a never-ending process, it is not clearly defined, it is waning, it is unnerving. It is not an agreement. It is not moving forward. It is not reaching inner peace. It is living your past, present, and future simultaneously.

It is reliving the darkest moments while out for coffee with your friends because you took a bite of your favourite food and immediately experienced gut-wrenching pain so you couldn’t finish. It is making choices, sacrifices, so that tomorrow can be a little bit better.

I wasn’t going to add a cheerful note. I don’t think you deserve it. I don’t think you deserve to finish this article feeling good. Feeling hopeful. Relieving yourself of any sympathy you might have felt because of any silver linings.

I digress, reluctantly, I am quite happy. I have found myself here. I refer to my dorm as my home. The people here have quickly become a part of said home. Personally, I am not religious, but if a god exists, they certainly sent my roommate. I’ve had such human experiences with them, from studying, to cooking, to shopping, to dancing. Sitting in silence with them provides a calm I haven’t felt in years. I met someone. He makes me feel heard, and my I just love listening to him speak. I don’t know what it is about him, but he has something, this quality, that I just don’t think I’ve seen in anyone else. Worrying about if he feels the same way certainly takes my mind off worrying about genuinely important tasks such as my homework for “killer chem.” My Residence Assistant has given me the injection I take to stay “healthy,” cut my hair, and brought me vitamin water when sick. That last example seems quite mediocre in comparison, but that small act of kindness meant a lot on my fourth day here.

So, is my life horrible? By all means, no. But I didn’t write this article for your sympathy. I didn’t write it for you to decide how difficult my life is. This isn’t for the everyday reader. This is for me. I wrote it because I am just so fucking tired. I wrote it for everyone who has had to explain their chronic illness or disease to a wide-eyed onlooker. I wrote it for anyone else at the Block Party who was writhing in pain trying to make friends. I wrote it for anyone else who became all too familiar with the floorplan of a hospital. I wrote it for anyone worried about finding unconditional love with their condition. I wrote this for everyone who doesn’t even know where to start nor what to say.