Monsters bearing gifts

When I was about 13, I went through a dark, "woe-is-me" phase like many adolescents do. I was always bitching about something. I had stacks of notebooks with morbid, depressing poetry that I'd written on teary, lonely nights. I liked to walk around Hot Topic and look at all the goth clothing, but never really bought any. Truth is I knew as angsty I was, I could never fully pull it off. Inside I was much too sweet and innocent. Naive too (but smart enough to realize I was). I did get some fuzzy, leopard prints though and a black shirt that had the word "popular" crossed out on it. I wore my eyeliner extra heavy on days I felt pissed off at the world. That was about as far as I went with that whole phase.


I was mad at the world, but too shy to scream about it. Instead I confided in some friends, who were also angry at life. One of them in particular was just as lost and scared (that's what all angry children are, in reality; lost and scared, right?) as me. She and I sat around listening to dreary music and called ourselves "the different ones". In doing that, we were trying desperately to change our feelings about ourselves. By openly saying we were different, we were voicing "hey! we're proud of it!", but of course, that was all pretend. We weren't proud. I wasn't anyway. As much as I loved being an individual, I wanted to be liked. All teenagers do. I'd spent years before that asking myself over and over why I felt different and why wasn't I popular. I hated all of the things about myself that made me unique. The only difference about me, compared to most kids, is that I refused to put on an act. When someone made fun of me for something, as hurtful as it was, I never backed down or pretended to be anything else. I knew that the day I started doing that, I'd lose myself. And as much as I disliked myself sometimes, I loved myself enough to not want to change.


Those days have long passed. I went to high school, made amazing friends and grew confident in who I was. Slowly but surely I became an adult (when did that happen?!) who wished she could go back in time and reassure her little-girl self that things weren't as bad as they seemed. Over the years I became a much more positive person. My dark poetry was replaced with upbeat, optimistic writing as I learned each day to notice the bright side of everything. I started fully believing that everything in life happens for a reason and with this realization nothing seemed that upsetting anymore. Even when it came to dating, as heartbroken as I was at times, I was always able to say to myself "It happened for a reason. He's not the one." and move on without looking back.


My new found outlook and attitude didn't come out of nowhere though. I had to hit rock bottom a few times before I really started to see what was happening. Sure there are some things in life that are terrible, no matter how you look at them. It's never fair and some days are really daunting. I still get angry at times. I still look up at the ceiling and ask "Why me?!" some nights. 


I was doing that last night.


Laying in a hospital bed with wires spewing out of my gown, I couldn't help but wonder why I've had to suffer so much recently. I collapsed on Wednesday just trying to get to the car. My poor mom (who's visiting from NJ) and Dustin had to call the paramedics because for about an hour after that I was unresponsive. I can remember their worried faces hovering above me while I laid in bed too weak to say anything. As weak and woozy as I was, I remember thinking, in a very hazy, blurry way, "Is this seriously my life?!" 


Since I've been struggling with my health I've tried a few times to write the type of poetry I wrote as a teenager. I sit there with pen and paper and try to let all of my frustration and fears fall onto the pages.


Every single time I've attempted it, the same thing has happened. The ending is always hopeful. Even on my worst of days - since becoming ill, I cannot write a hopeless, "life sucks" poem. They always start out sorrowful, but end with something encouraging. 


I just now realized why that is. It's because my health did something incredible to me - it made me both weak and strong at the same time. It took away everything I thought I knew and loved, only to allow me to realize that all of the things in life that I thought were vital weren't. I lost my job. I lost a lot of my friends. My Summer concert tickets were wasted (which at the time, I was beyond crushed about). I couldn't even drive my car. Initially I thought my life was over. I kept desperately trying to feel better and giving myself a time line. "I need to be better by July so I can go on the camping trip!" "I need to get better by August so I can see the Black-eyed Peas!" "I need to get better by September so I can go to college!" 


In the end, none of those things happened. 


For awhile there I thought, "Not only have I lost everything. I'm nothing."


I equated all of my missed opportunities and lack of accomplishments as a clear sign that I was not good enough/of lesser value than my peers, who had already experienced so much more. I was embarrassed, a shamed of the illness that had robbed me of so much. I didn't give my friends the details about it at first. When I first began dating as a chronically ill person, I lied about it. In the end though all that did was paint a picture of someone I'm not; it let people think that my life (no college, no job) was my choice. Without explaining why, people thought what they wanted and somewhere along the line, I began thinking the way I knew they were thinking. I began believing that I was lazy, not determined enough; a failure.


And then somewhere along the line, I realized I wasn't all of the things I didn't do. I was all of the things I was doing. I realized that I was a fighter who lived every day to the fullest despite my limitations and challenges. I started to admire myself in a way I hadn't before. I started to believe in myself. I became my own best friend, and from there on out, I decided to let myself believe in miracles and in happiness. 


Over the last seven years I continue to fight to for better quality of life. The truth is, no matter how bad it gets, I'm never going to quit. Some days I'm going to feel like giving up, giving in, letting go. I have times where I'm so weak, so ill, in so much pain, that I feel unfixable, broken.


I know the road ahead of me isn't an easy one, but it is my road, and I'm going to trust that despite its bumps and detours, it is still paved with beautiful things.


Obviously, my situation now is a far more challenging one than the struggles I endured as a teenager, but still-


I'm going to remind myself on a daily basis that back in my dark-poetry days I felt like there would never be a light at the end of the tunnel and now here I am, wishing I could tell my teenage self that there, indeed, was. And that all the things I was worried about back then weren't really worries at all.


At some point in the future my older self is going to do the same thing - I'm going to look back and say "I wish I could've told myself things were going to get better. Because they did."


But regardless of what happens, I'll always be blessed for the insight and spirit my illness has given me. It's like a scary monster that arrived in my life unexpected, uninvited, but with gifts for me. I didn't have to accept those gifts, but I did. And I'll continue to.


(This was yet another time when I wrote something expecting, wanting it to be a pessimistic rant, but it ended up being exactly the opposite.)