I think I grieve time more than anything

It’s possible that my health may improve one day. I hold on to hope that it can.

It’s possible that I may end up with better relationships than all the ones I’ve lost.

It’s possible that my ill health will focus me onto a different and greater career path than the one I had originally planned.

But the one thing that’s not possible at all is the thing that haunts me most.

It’s not possible to get back… time.

I can’t get back my 20s… the “greatest years of my life.” This is something that I wrestle with everyday. I wish my resentment would fade away like a wave when the tide changes but alas, it does not ebb and flow so much as it crashes me over the rocks. Not at all subtly reminding me of that which I had dreamt of having by now, and starkly comparing it to the reality I live.

Often I feel closer to the age that I was when I got sick, nearly seven years ago, than the age I am now.

Although, it’s not too hard to see how time has passed so eagerly. With years to diagnosis, months between appointments, hanging out for tests and results, waiting to see if this new medication or treatment will help or being patient enough to find out that it doesn’t.

They say the time passes anyway, but I think it passes differently. You only need take a look at my photo albums to see the number of good memories dwindle and fade into the abyss.

I think I grieve time more than anything.

Because with time you have hope, you have possibility, you have space.

Space to work things out.

Space to grieve and heal however long it takes.

Time to be who you were still meant to be.