I read last year’s post before writing this. Writing is a strange phenomenon. Though I am reading my own writing, it feels like I am reading the writing of another person. Perhaps a self one year younger is as good as a different person. I can feel her struggle, sadness and loneliness as though she is right before me now. But I don’t feel like I am the same person anymore, though I still struggle, and I am still sad and lonely mostly. Last year I wrote:
If I can have a birthday wish, I wish for more emotional strength. To just be the way I am. To truly be able to accept my self, not just an intellectual acceptance, but with the whole of my body.
I wouldn’t say I have fully accepted myself for the way I am, if full acceptance was even possible. But comparatively to that self last year, I feel a lot more at ease with myself. So much of it is associated to the contemplation that I may be autistic. I’ve always felt different, and I wish it wasn’t the case – but knowing that my brain may be structurally different makes me feel that the world and my self makes so much more sense to me now. I have always found it difficult to exist simply because this world is not made for people like me. This reminds me of a quote by a zen master: that sometimes knowing a situation is entirely irredeemable gives us permission to stop struggling. Why struggle when it makes no difference?
Previously I’ve always believed it was something about me that was deeply flawed, so it felt as though I didn’t and couldn’t try harder. I felt like trash. This was how this society has always made me feel. I was never fitting in, never compliant, always not resilient enough, always disappointing, always weak.
How ridiculous it is to live in a way that was always trying to meet people’s hidden and visible expectations of me. It feels entirely ridiculous to me now, but I was so, so, imprisoned. Perhaps I still am. I don’t have full control of how my body instinctively reacts to certain stimuli or provocations, but there is an intellectual awareness that so much of what I used to be imprisoned by are simply social constructs.
I am a lot more comfortable with who I am and where I am. I can say that I am becoming more of my self, and I am progressively dropping more of the masks I’ve worn throughout my life. It helps that I’ve lost my respect for this society as a whole – a society that collectively deludes itself into believing a disabling virus is harmless.
Refusing to expose myself to catching covid repeatedly has made me more socially isolated that I was already, and it has forced me to become more resilient against societal pressure than I was willing to be. I am very unwilling to risk my health frivolously so it has made it easier to give up my social ties, because I have already experienced the loneliness of being chronically ill. I know that nobody (except my partner) would truly care if I develop long covid, and people in general will take every opportunity to dismiss our suffering from a chronic illness – because it is always about their uncomfortable feelings, not ours.
I am very much a person that is an outcome of my personal history, and my personal history is full of disability, pain and medical bills. In the past I saw that as tragic, now I am at the age when I am grateful for the lessons it taught me early, so I don’t squander the rest of my time away. Perhaps more important than my physical health is my psychological health, and I see it as a positive sign of my psychological health that I know with certainty what is truly important to me, and what is no longer worth pandering to. I feel less and less disappointed with people, because the more I accept where I am, the more I understand where they are. I don’t expect much out of people anymore. Maybe people would see that has a positive evolution, but for me it is in tangent with the reality that expectations only develop when there is enough care.
Like a photo in portrait mode once we blur out the background we can truly focus on the subject, I can now focus more on what I truly care about instead of always being hampered by all that noise. My partner and I will celebrate 9 years together soon, and that’s 9 years of birthdays she has been by my side. She has taught me that just to have one person sincerely celebrating another year I am alive is more than enough. I can feel and notice a lot more in my days now because I am no longer drowning so much because I lacked existential boundaries.
Instead of letting society define that events that would supposedly make us happy and fulfilled – I guess it made sense that I felt like I could never be happy and fulfilled because I was expecting happiness and fulfilment from the wrong things – these days, just looking at my partner and knowing she exists in the same moment makes me happy. Noticing the shade of green on a building. Being able to eat food that I like. Noticing that I am not in chronic pain at the moment. Hot showers. Buying stickers. Observing the cuteness of some human beings. Having just one close friend who is willing to act as my will executor. Experiencing cold. Receiving warmth. Experiencing a different culture. Seeing art. Having clean clothes. Collecting train stamps. Being clear-headed enough to write. Having a sense of my own preferences and values. Books. Having pain-free teeth. Being mobile. Lifting weights. Being kind when the moment strikes me. Telling my partner cold jokes. Hearing her laughter. When logistics work out. Walking 20,000 steps a day. Breathing without a blocked nose. Running without feeling breathless. Listening to music. Seeing what my partner makes. Witnessing her happiness when she fixes something that was broken in the house. Having a place that I can call home. Etc.
Being aware of the richness that exists in these moments and awareness, knowing that a ton of things have to be in place before they can exist – this is what happiness looks like to me at age 44. Happiness is being capable of noticing the potential and richness of our own lives, it is knowing that we can now determine what makes our lives, it is being able to discern what is actually noise and extraneous. It is finally knowing who we are as a person, and being able to live as we are.
I know I go through ups and downs, but today, this is what I contain.
I write one of these every year.