Chronic Illnesses and What If's

Trigger Warning: Mental Health

If I had just...

If I could have...

If I didn’t...

Those were the words I repeated to myself when I became bed-bound. I lived in regret and couldn’t see a way out. I believed that if I had made different choices in my life then maybe just maybe I wouldn’t have become so sick. It must have been my own fault because that’s what society had me believe along with specialists and those around me.

To have unexplained symptoms, then fight for a diagnosis and then be given a link to a website and get on with it. Looking back I had no fight left in me, I had already felt like I lost my battle with mental health so how could I fight for my physical health.

The same vicious cycle of ‘what if?’ continued. I say this time and time again that being sick is painful, debilitating and something that has stripped me off a lot. However, without it I would not have been forced to rest, I would not have learned about my emotions and got private therapy. I would not have understood my previous privileges after being stripped off them. And as I grow older and live with these multiple conditions I have realised that those what ifs and scenarios do not necessarily mean my life would have been better off. I may have moved abroad, become sick and been left with a hefty bill. I may have had loads of properties under my belt and then fallen behind on bills.

There are often times where people who have never had the experience of living with invisible illnesses, hidden disabilities or any other diagnosis give unsolicited advice. It would feel like a never ending battle and one I often lost a lot of energy towards.

There are times where I feel like I fully accept who I am, for now. Then a few judgemental comments later I have that reminder of how far we have to go as a society. Can I control every single thought and emotion? No. Can I create content to share my experience and others who have similar battles? Yes. And that's sometimes all we can control I can't control the narrative, but I can share perspective and clarity from a different side and community.

One conversation at a time maybe we can help raise awareness, but I have also learned to accept that sometimes people share their ignorance regardless of how it may make you feel. I’ve had a number of conversations personally and also on my podcast about how isolating it can be, debilitating and exhausting. One minute you have a social life, a career, a status in society, you have a memory, a routine, a choice and then everything feels gone. I have found myself bed-ridden with my thoughts praying for it to all go away. I have found my own words terrorising and harmful, I have allowed those around me to make me feel like to not exist would be a better choice. But sometimes something so life-changing and traumatic could be the one thing that gives you purpose. Although, I have felt isolated, I have felt mute, ignored and all of a sudden uninvited from anything and everything I now don’t really have expectations of people.

There’s a battle to survive constantly, I guess the newer version of me cannot simply just carry all those judgements, the suppression is just not worth it.