Feeling Like This

Did I just have a really good day?

I forgot I could feel like this.

It wasn’t even anything big! I just had a normal day. I woke up early, and I tried that thing I saw on Instagram where you go outside first thing in the morning and let the sun hit your face before touching your phone. Then I went back to sleep. And when I woke up again, I got to babysit for my favorite family for the first time in a month.

And after, they asked me to hang out. Like I wasn’t too much of a bummer. Like my grief, my stories that start with “soooo, I just spent 21 days inpatient while the NIH was gutted,” and my general state of falling apart weren’t reasons to avoid me. I guess I had just assumed that they would be. Because, honestly? I’ve been really, really depressed. My psychiatrist thinks it’s situational. And that situation has lasted a long, long time.

I’m still grieving. It hasn’t even been a year.

I’m still gravely ill, still burning through meds, still heading back to NIH in three weeks for a new treatment. I still spend at least a quarter of every month vomiting, fighting malignant hypertension, or dealing with my widespread skin cancer. I still need more treatment, and it’s not going to be pretty.

And, on top of that, we’re living in an oligarchy, and I’m terrified for my rights.

But I am not just that.

I am more.

I am an aunt to two nieces and a nephew who run to the door to greet me when I come over, who insist on pulling me back inside for one last hug. I am someone who works for a family that refused to fire me when I missed a month of work and calls me irreplaceable. I’m a sister who is worthy of her sister making their favorite meal because she knows I’m sad about St. Patrick’s Day without my dad.

I am someone who, on a completely normal day, sat at my sister’s with her friend Christina, who had talked to her queer pastor about me and is really trying to help me, and I felt seen. And so fucking grateful. And actually optimistic (what?!?) that I will find the community I crave.

I am not just my grief. I am not just my illness. And today, I felt like a whole person again. And wow. I forgot I could feel like this.

And for the first time in a long time, I’m thinking if I get out of bed, I’ll have another day like this tomorrow.