'What if's' and 'how's'

Day 17 of the 30 day chronic illness challenge really got me
thinking.

Day 17: How would things be different if you weren't ill?

This is a hard one because being ill kind of defines my life at the moment. One day at work I was complaining to my friend about how my life seems to revolve around doctors appointment's and physio sessions and she told me 'schedule your appointments around your life, not the other way around.' Whilst this is pretty hard to actually do, it really got be thinking about how I define myself.

There are a lot of 'what if's, how's and why's' when you have a chronic illness. Why doesn't my body work the way I want it to? How am I meant to complete a task when I can't walk? What if I wasn't sick. The last one is probably the toughest to answer, because many people end up becoming defined by their illness. Before I had chronic pain and everything that came after it, I had severe allergies. Correction. I have sever allergies. Peanuts, tree nuts, dairy products, eggs, trees, dust, grass, cats, wheat and more. Just about anything you can think of to be allergic to, I am. I carry an epipen and I'm the weird chick who all the teachers worried about going into anaphylactic shock on field trips. In short, I've always had some sort of chronic illness. And being the 'allergic person' has really defined who I am and who I became. But I have never known better. That's just always who I've been. Don't get me wrong, I've been bullied because of it, I've cried over it and even contemplated giving up food all together, or just eating it and dying. But I've dealt with it. I never considered the huge impact it had on my life before everything else came along.

Now my chronic illness do define be, and I don't like it. I don't want to be defined by them, but it seems that I have no choice.

'What if's' are a big part of my life. Originally I planned on writing this post about acceptance and coming to terms with a chronic diagnosis. For me, chronic is a dirt word. It means forever, sick, hurt, pain. It's a life sentence that I hate using. And yet it is part of what defines me. So... what if I wasn't sick, how would life be different?

Let's dream up the perfect life... sans chronic pain. BTW if you didn't know this about me, I topped French, I went on exchange to France and I love French, so yeah...

If I wasn't sick, I think I would be studying something different. I might have gotten a different OP. I might still be a pushover. I would be clueless to what defines people's lives and how struggle and hardship either make or break a person. I would appreciate things less, take more for granted. I'd have more money. My family would have more money. I wouldn't be the weird person is my family who's always sick. I'd be normal. What is normal? As my chronic pain clinic friends and I are famously known for saying.... 'normal is overrated.' It is. There is no such thing as normal. We are all unique.

Nothing is impossible

I think my life would be very different if I wasn't sick. I think that having multiple chronic illnesses has made me a better person. And whilst I don't want to think that my illnesses define me, in a way they do. They define the way I act, speak and think towards others with chronic conditions. They give me more compassion. They open me up to loss. They are a part of me and I wouldn't be the same without them.

Life is full of what if's and but's. What if I wasn't sick? So what! I don't like my chronic illnesses, but I believe that we are only given as much as we can take, so us chronic illness fighters must have super strength!

BB :)