When you’re in your twenties, everyone always says, ‘you’re young, you have plenty of time’. Time to decide what you want to do with your life, time to choose a career path, time to see what you want out of the world. No-one talks about what happens when things go wrong during this time in you life. No-one prepares you for injuries, or for mental health struggles, or for feeling like you are just stuck. No-one talks about what happens when these factors limit what you are able to physically do during the years that you are expected to do the most.
For over a year and a half, I have been in pain. I have had injury after injury usually brought on by virtue of one other. At this present moment in time, I fluctuate between days when I begin to think maybe just maybe I’ll be okay, to overwhelming bouts of pain so stark and sudden that I want to throw up. Sometimes just putting a smile on my face feels like a battle I cannot win.
So much of our system is broken. I have found it increasingly hard to see doctors or get diagnoses without long waits, which then knocks back on my work and job. This adds to the struggle as I attempt constantly to navigate processes that are not built to accommodate our broken system. Very little is in my control and to be outwardly seen as young and healthy while feeling so much physical and emotional pain is, well, fucking hard.
And I know I’m not alone in that struggle.
So I started to think today, while resting a leg that I am struggling to walk on and recovering from a panic attack I did not see coming, ‘How in the world do I process these feelings in a way that is productive while also not suppressing them until I can no longer hide them?’.
Writing has always provided that safe space for me. For those that know me well, they will say I am always writing. I fuel my worlds with the emotions that I keep bottled up and allow those emotions voice through the stories that I write. It isn’t always easy and a lot of my writing never sees the light of day, but it is therapeutic nonetheless to guide my characters through scenarios that I myself cannot seem to navigate in my own life.
Then I began wonder, as much as I love my solitary writing sphere, is it actually helping keeping everything to myself?
The short answer…no.
I have some incredible friends and family in my life. They are so supportive and lovely. I cannot thank them enough for what they have done and continue to do for me, but I am well aware that everyone has there own stuff going on. We are all human and we all reach full capacity at some point in our life. I never want to be the cause of that for anyone.
Instead, I have decided to take a huge leap of faith and pour my ongoing anxiety and pain into this blog. It will be an honest space where I will discuss life, the ups and the downs, health, how I cope with those bad moments and how I celebrate the good.
I hope you will join me on that journey and we can build a community of support and care in a world where everything feels daily that much more disconnected. And if anyone who does read this and, as a result, feels some semblance of not being alone in their struggles then I will be happy.
Thank you so much for reading.
For the first time, I am just…A Simple Writer.
