Thursday 3 February 2011

Time

Time is one thing I really fear. I know it's a very common complaint, not enough hours in the days, time flying by far too quickly. And I'm sure there are many people who fear it, in their way, fear in bringing death. I suppose at least it's not bringing me that (well, not for a good few years yet, I hope). You see, for me marks this illness, and how long I've suffered, and how many interminable years it may go on. Every year another birthday, another year down; another anniversary of first noticing symptoms, of diagnosis...so many reminders of a thing that I can never forget as it is.

And I fear the time I've lost as much as the time to come. I was 11 when I first started noticing symptoms, no more than a child. How many people say your teenage years are the best of your life? Mine weren't. By the age of 12 I could barely walk and left school, and children that age are fickle, so I don't hold it against those friends of mine who stopped popping round, it's natural, children know no better. But it meant that by the age of 14, I was friendless, trapped in my house that was now my prison. No, that's wrong; my own body was my prison. And the "best years of my life" were spent that way, as time raced by, gobbling them up. I did my GCSEs in the living room, and after they were done, I didn't go out celebrating with my mates, I went to bed and slept, exhausted.

I was 20 a couple of weeks ago, no longer a teenager. But the truth is, I never really was one, never had the chance to be. How many experiences, good and bad, I've lost to the wind, I can't begin to imagine, and in truth, I try not to. Who'd want to think about what they've missed out on? Yet time, and every anniversary, and every little marker it thrusts carelessly into my face, is the reminder of all that lost time, that I'll never get back, and those experiences I'll never get a chance to live through.

September - first noticeable symptoms
November - tortuous tests by disbelieving doctors
March - diagnosis

The list goes on...

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