I’ve been trying to write a post about turning 25 for weeks and it hasn’t been happening.
(By the way, I turn 25 tomorrow!)
Every year, I have a minor existential crisis before my birthday. It’s just a fun little tradition I do. (Drives my family and friends nuts, but I think they’re used to it now.) I freak out that I’m getting too old too fast, that I haven’t done enough, that I’m not good enough—but I also get excited, too.
I expect to wake up the day of my birthday every year and experience some cosmic shift in the universe where I will feel different, have the clarity I’ve been ambling after for years, finally attain maturity, and understand who I am and what my purpose is.
It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m still hoping it will on Friday morning when I wake up, because it has to at some point, right? Just statistically speaking?
I never give up hope that one day everything will just click together and make sense. I’m hanging onto the dream that one day, I can take a deep breath and say, “So that’s why.”
*
The last few weeks, I’ve been psyching myself out over the fact that I’m officially a quarter of a century old, as if 25 is so much more significant than 24. Although tomorrow I will be able to rent a car *AND* run for the House of Representatives. (My Congresswoman is up for reelection next year. Should I run against her? Linford 2017?)
A quarter of a century means I’m eligible to have my quarter life crisis. (Declaring you’re having one before 25 is so morbid, people lambast you when you say you’re experiencing it at 20, I learned several years ago.) And boy! The confusion of “what do I do now?” with my treatments makes me feel eligible for a crisis.
So between all of that that, a meds change I went through at the end of August, the season change affecting my POTS, my brother moving out (we miss him, even though he’s close), and going back to school—I’m a bit of a mess.
I’m experiencing the highest highs and the lowest lows.
And it’s hard for me to reach out beyond my parents and my therapist. Sometimes, even though writing is hard, it’s easier to post a long, sweeping public release on my blog than it is to text the people I love the most that I’m sincerely terrified, not just ALL CAPS NERVOUS ALL THE FEELS. I’m trying so hard to change. I’m trying so hard to learn why this is. At least I know I’m not alone in being this way. Thanks for that, Tumblr.
Changing and growing up is the worst. And even if in the grand scheme of things, I’m still young, I’ve got plenty of time, I feel like the Big Cosmic Clock is ticking. It’s scary. And fear doesn’t mix well with chronic illness, especially when you’re predisposed to have heightened levels of adrenaline running through your body.
I’m learning. Even when I don’t want to, my therapist is holding me accountable to learn more about myself every week, even the weeks when I walk in to her office exhausted and ask her to do all the work so I don’t have to. “But what fun would that be?” she usually says back to me.
I’m choosing to have faith in the people who tell me everything’s going to be OK, even though making the choice to believe isn’t easy. Usually, when they have Ph.D.’s and M.D.’s after their names, I’m more inclined to believe them. I’m hanging in there. Therapy helps. My support system helps. Long, long baths with Bath and Body Works aromatherapy products help. Music helps. (I’ve started listening to Laura Stevenson, and she’s some kind of wonderful.)
*
As for my birthday itself, if you’d like to help me celebrate, you can donate to my Facebook Fundraiser for Dysautonomia International in honor of Dysautonomia Awareness Month. I met my goal of $300 yesterday thanks to lovely, lovely people. You can donate to my fundraiser here, or you can always make donations directly to Dysautonomia International.
See y’all when I’m 25!
