I feel like all I can see when I look at myself now is a sick person. I can see the possibilities for what else I might be, for what else I am, but most of those are things that may be beyond my actual capabilities. When you get down to it, I am mangled.
I am a dancer who cannot dance, a writer who cannot hold a pencil, a student who cannot attend classes. I am an extrovert who cannot leave the house, and a reader who does not have the presence of mind to untangle a plot. I am damaged goods.
I am a burden on my family, the back hole in my parents' pockets. I am a bright spot of possibility and potential that society invested in only for my stock to crash. I am wasted.
I tell myself that no good character is without a weakness, and that the only reason the world can survive my awesomeness is because I am handicapped in this way. What terrible things I would accomplish if I were healthy!
Everything I do is less already, because what more could it have been instead?
I am good with masks. I can play the part of the healthy person for hours at a time!
It is a facade. It is a sand castle.
The illusion dissipates. The walls crumble.
I make plans for the future that I cannot count on coming to pass.
Sometimes, I look in the mirror, and all I see is a sick person, staring back at me. Her eyes are shot through with blood, her cheeks are puffy, complexion dotted with thick, red, flaking skin, with bruises under her eyes like she got punched in the face. Her lips are chapped, the roots of her dyed hair are showing, and no one that young should have lines cut so deep in her face. No one so young should bear such obvious evidence of hardship.
Pain is a formidable sculptor.
I want more than anything to look at that sick person with a smile, but I say, "I hate you" several times a day. I thought I was talking to my body at first, but now I'm no longer sure.
How can I love that which is destroying me?
And that's what it feels like.
IT FEELS LIKE I AM BEING DESTROYED.
It is not artful. It is not beautiful. It is not a romantic story, something for healthy people to read and coo over, sigh and interpret as me being "remade." It is not creation out of chaos, a phoenix rising from its own ashes, oceans receding to reveal land. No. I am not raw iron, and my illness is not a crucible.
I am a star - a beautiful, young star with an atmosphere and a surface that might have supported life one day - being drawn into a black hole, painfully aware of the inevitability of being stripped down and consumed.
Now - tell me that I am being short-sighted. Tell me that I am being pessimistic. Tell me that I am a brilliant girl who can do anything she wants. Tell me that other people have it worse. Tell me that I should be grateful.
Tell me about this one person you heard about - same problem (ish) as me - who did such and such great thing in spite of their malady. Tell me about a future where they've figured out a cure. Tell me about how I've given up without a fight, and how darkness always comes before the dawn, and how I'm such a strong person, things will get better, you swear.
Tell me all the ways I'm wrong to feel and think that I am just a sick person.
You aren't telling me anything I haven't screamed at myself in the mirror.
