I currently AM that person “10 years from then” Relieved as Hell I did Just This. I cannot even explain how much better it makes me feel that I did all that I did in the first 30 years of my life.
I DID what I WANTED to do, and found a way of DOING them, shamelessly and UNapologetically. I didn’t know I was even Autistic back then; I know I would have been able to manage to do all this even better if I had known, too.
I Didn’t Do Anything I Didn’t Want To Do, unless Necessary … But I only “Adulted” the bare minimum I could get away with. I went ahead and ENJOYED Myself. In MY OWN Way - NOT the way other people, magazines, social media, whatever, said it “should be”. I figured it out, what I WANTED and I LOVED It.
I have a good list of things that I did that I’m SO Damned Freaking PROUD of. Stuff that was fun. Stuff that was challenging, overwhelming and yet freaking incredible.
Did things that were so ridiculous but was absolutely great at the same time, like renting a place in the outskirts of London on a whim, on my 22nd Birthday, and moving there the week after. Or like using scant money leftover from rent etc to buy tickets to me & friend’s favourite musical instead of buying proper food (I was just 23yo and also still fighting with Anorexia at the time, so I wasn’t particularly insterested in “wasting” my hard earned money on something I didn’t like, too…).
It makes me feel like I have a life less Wasted now… and I don’t really have Any Regrets -- well, apart from getting Severely Disabled and Devestated by Medical Conditions that took EVERYTHING that I ever cared about from me. And I regret that I’ve become nothing but a potato that barely breathes because of it. I resent I can’t have even more… But what I have done is more than several lifetimes wrapped up in just 30 years.
I’m SO GLAD I did it then, and DID NOT WAIT. I wouldn’t have ever got the chance, if I’d have Waited. We don’t know when our time as fully-functioning Human Beings will come to an end. There’s Death, sure. But then, there’s worse than Death.
Accidents, Illnesses, Deseases…
Heck, if people of such likes of King Charles and Catherine, Princess of Wales - aged just 42 at the time of diagnosis - can get Cancer, of all things… None of us are safe, EVER. Prince William’s mother got into a car and Never Came Home… She was just 36 years old. Age means Nothing. Standing, Quality Of Life, Money… Life Doesn’t Care.
These some of the most perfect examples that NO-ONE has a say in what happens to them and when.
I lost EVERYTHING before my 33rd Birthday… I got so ill, I’ve barely survivied it. Two serious, severe levels of neurological conditions with no cure.
... And More.
I had to give up my hard-fought-for and AMAZING Career. I lost my home and my life - forced back from London to return to live with my parents to be cared for like an infant. I barely managed through Sepesis & Seprticaemia shortly afterwards (& hospitalised for nearly 2 months, on IV antibiotics the whole time).
When it came, I caught COVID, and it WRECKED me; I’m absolutely sure I have Long COVID as well. Doctors let me suffer and languish, disintergrate, for 12 years before Diagnosing me with Functional Neurological Disorder… And by then it was MUCH Too Late to do Anything to help. The Rampage was rife, and unstoppable, and had left me unable to barely even live... [ hs in, meaning nothing more than Being Alive]
I can’t really move & Paralysed, Nothing below the chest; effectively Quadraplegic. Dysphagia means I can’t eat or drink properly or safely. I had to have a Suprapubic Catheter because it rendered me fully incontinent… and currently don’t have one, because it closed up and awating yet another SP surgery to put one in, leaving me able to do little more than sit and dco as little as possible and drink as little as possible, because it’s awful to constantly be soiling myself, and there’s the vile smell that goes with it. I’m doing doing all that in Public!
The Extraordinaryly Overwhelming, Life-Limiting Fatigue is Beyond Exhaustion.
Functional Seizures/BlackOuts are CONSTANT, Several Per Day, EVERY Day..
It might be IF. It might be When.
But Trust Me - if you do it that way... You’ll.NEVER. Regret. It...
Only the things you said No To that you... Really. Wanted. To. Do...
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