con-grad-ulations 2 me!

what, like it was hard?

When my spine snap-crackle and popped in an accident I was 14 and had to go to ‘hospital school’. It sucked. My school refused to send worksheets, hospital school said I should take time off to focus on myself a bit and my recovery, but all I wanted was to join in on discussions when my friends would visit. Discussions about terrible teachers and way too much homework. I wanted to carry on living the totally normal school experience I had so far, the crushes, the rivals, the bunking off, and the after-school park hangouts.

The nurses tried their best to make me a sense of normalcy for a 14-year-old. They would come to my room and tell me all about their romances, we would have wheelchair races down the corridors at night, they’d do my hair all spiked up and crazy and dance around my bed after a successful day of keeping food down - and hold my hand tight when the feeding tube had to return.

A few classmates from school held a bake sale when they heard about the accident, they were told the proceeds must be used on an educational gift. And so I received a Kindle. I loved my Kindle because I had always loved reading. But I was a 14-year-old and so, naturally, sooner or later the Kindle seemed to fill up less with novels of life and death, but instead of absolutely terrible smut… and then it stopped working. Once every few months my parents remember that we have a Kindle and attempt to make it switch on again, I am horrified for the day it does.

I returned to school after I was discharged in a wheelchair for just one day a week and I hated it. I hated having to use the lifts, I hated people holding the doors open. I hated that I tried so hard to pretend to understand the struggles of normal 14-15 year old’s whereas it felt like I was battling it out every day to survive just a good night’s sleep. Within a month or two I was in 3 days a week with my crutches. And sooner or later I was in every single day. Things finally felt as normal as they could be, I’d pop into parties for a few hours, I had crushes on stupid smelly boys, I had big dramatic friendship fallouts and makeups, and I finally was enjoying the school experience and just about dealing with my bad physical (and mental) health experience.

Part of my GCSEs were taken in bed when I was recovering from operations. I’d gone to school and sat on a hot exposed pipe in the PE changing rooms. Because I had no sensation in my lower body I didn’t feel the pipes burn through me and melt my tights into my charred and burnt-up skin. It wasn’t until I got home and tried to take them off, that I realized that they weren’t budging and that chunks of burnt flesh seemed to be falling off. After the accident I had a physiotherapist who would come every single day of the week to do 2 hours of physio, I called her in to see what was going on back there and she let out a scream. The nurse at the hospital cried as she prepared me for surgery. It wasn’t so bad, I only have really smooth large scars now. Meanwhile, I was just worried about my GCSE’s that were starting so soon and now I would miss out on revision time.

After a few revision surgeries and whatnot, I was back at home laying on my stomach on the sofa bed. I was prone to having bedsores since my spinal injury so I had to sleep with ‘moon boots.’ So there I was, in my moon boots, buttocks out under a thin sheet, a pack of Skittles, and my exam invigilator sat across from me, watching me take my GCSE’s.

The sixth form I attended was at the same secondary school and it was good. I was in love with my friend, The Canadian - he left back for Canada one night and there were very dramatic love professions over text before lift-off, and lots of burnt cookies..and tears to one-direction songs. I had best friends sitting on the sofa watching Jerry Springer between lessons, I ate canteen plain pasta with cheddar cheese for lunch, and there were a group of boys we had called ‘the cavemen’ who would stomp around all day that we would observe, I had my second boyfriend ever- the school drug dealer, who was simply so nice and I’d love to apologize for peeing in his bed that one time - but in my defense, my body wasn’t in my control and I hadn’t really figured out how to manage it.

Things seemed to be as normal as they could be for me. I had all the drama of a normal sixth former, I had all the same concerns, the exam stresses, the teachers who totally just didn’t get it, and ‘the system’ I was totally going to change because damn the man!! I went on my first holiday with friends, we went to underaged clubs and people took turns giving me piggybacks because my body could not walk back home, I felt so happy. I felt so ready for the world.

I was enjoying the good and ‘normal’ and simply dealing/learning about/naively not realizing how to live with health issues.

Then came university. I’d always wanted to study away from home but I wasn’t healthy enough to live on my own and so I commuted to a university in London. Some days a taxi would come to pick me up and drop me off (they were provided by the university and somehow it was always a wild journey - I shall write a whole other bit on this). Some days I’d feel good enough to take a train. I made such loving new friends, I visited my best friends at their out-of-town campuses, and it was cool to live the university experience for short weekends, I’d find myself on the coach home thinking ‘yeah there’s no way I would survive, I’m so glad I’m living home’ in a totally envious tone (it’s still my biggest sore spot, the fact that I had to commute and missed out).

I got hospitalized with sepsis two years in a row, one the day of my exam, the next one a year later on the day of the retake of that very same exam. I danced my ass off at the end-of-year ball, I flirted my little heart out with a super emo boy who couldn’t look me in the eyes, I had one too many pub lunches where we would laugh so loud all the old men would turn and huff at us, I had my first totallly grown-up serious relationship, and I loved it all.

I think the anger and resentment towards the hurdles didn’t matter as much as they had when I was in secondary school and sixth form, I knew now if I stress too much my body shuts down with pain, but if I laugh a lot my body seems to be beaming and glowing from within. So why not try my best to just keep laughing through the shit parts, and enjoying my somewhat not-so-normal university experience? Yes, joining societies and whatnot would be lovely, but our energy was only enough for one social day a week - so why not make it the best social day ever, and say it’s just too bad that we can’t do more?

When my postgraduate studies began life seemed to hit STOP. We were in a global pandemic and my lectures were over Zoom, but over the span of a few months the girl (angel, goddess, smoking hottie) I met over Zoom lectures and I ended up at a point where we would stay out drinking and dancing until 8 in the morning, I would definitely overdo it to catch up for lost time because finally, my health was permitting it. We would join 9 am lectures over zoom (drunkenly slurring our way through answers, telling certain classmates how smooooth his voice sounds). We would take the long walk back from the bar - the one that seemed to change locations every time we look for it, lipstick smudged, a bench with the fox by it waiting patiently for us to sit and speak our stories.

I moved in with my best friend at the very start of my LPC, I met her at undergrad and now she seems to be centuries ago from me. That apartment burnt down and I moved out on my own. I’d stay up all night falling in love again over phone calls to the boy in Canada, the first (and only?) boy I ever loved way back in secondary school. I would be hosting endless sleepovers, dance parties, ‘somber soup evenings,’ Dungeons and Dragons sessions, my very first Friendsgiving (we would run around to different floors asking neighbors for spare chairs), and so on. I got scorned, I got wise, I was so so stupid, I was very very smart. I felt my brain try and step into adulthood in that apartment, and then oftentimes step two steps back in order to protect my girlhood. Now they hold hands and trust in one another, we frolic in the fields (and sometimes get stung by bees).

I was learning slowly, through trial and error, to put myself first, above all stress. Stress shuts down my body very quickly. I once stressed so much I passed out in pain on my bathroom floor and my parents had to drive to mine and get the door opened, only to find me in a pool of my own vomit laying on the floor. They then helped me get back up and in about 2-3 hours’ time I was yelling at them to give me my laptop because I had to finish my essay…I did in fact submit it on time…it was not worth it. Drive and passion are great things, and wanting to succeed is great, but putting yourself under that much pressure is simply stupidity. None of the stress has ever been worth the pain. The sunrise always found me and picked me back up anyway, it just took me a while to trust to lean into its light.

I’ve been treating graduation as though it is my birthday. I’m planning a party (Legally Blonde themed, of course), with no details left out, I’m going out for dinners and drinks to celebrate, I’m putting life on pause and taking this moment.

And a reason for this is that I am not at all excited about my birthday this year. It’s miserable because I love a day dedicated to me, I love my birthday as much as Christmas itself! But last year was genuinely traumatic and so I’ve been getting more and more anxious as the day approaches, thinking over and over about that week last year…so, graduation seems to be my way of replacing my birthday woes (my birthday is next month so let’s see how this goes).

But an even bigger reason is that it does feel like a birthday to me. A start and end in more than just the educational sense. Here’s to life as you know it, here’s to the bullshit prior and the sleepless nights and many frights. Good riddance!

But also here’s to being thankful for the journey, the laughter, the walks home from lectures, or the long walk back home from bars, the dance parties, the people you’ve met - even just the brief encounters, to teenage confessions at picnics after school, to burn cookies and blasting one direction, to the coolest wheelchair wheelies in hospital corridors, to girls holidays with sun sea and suspicious parents, to soup with sunset views, to sunrises on a lonesome balcony. Here’s to all the crushes in school corridors, to memorizing their lesson plan so you ‘bump into’ them outside of science, every single week.

Here’s to the great teachers who were trying to teach me the importance of putting myself first way back when I was complaining that they were refusing to send work. Last week at my brother’s parents’ evening I ended up bumping into my old form tutor who would come visit me at home back when I was 14 and only coming into school a day a week. She cried when I told her I’d finished my studies. I was so lucky to have teachers who cared so much. I was so blind to not realize it.

Here’s to my parents who never put any pressure on me, my dad to told me countless times that education can be repeated, it can come back, but my health cannot. My mother who beams with pride the most when I let out genuine smiles, who appreciates my art, who holds me close whenever I’ve felt the crushing weight of adapting to be like everyone else my age was just too much.

And here’s to after. The start of the rest of my life - how terrifying that sounds. Truth be told I have no idea if I’m ready, or if anyone really is! But I’m just so blindly and perhaps awfully naively excited. I’m hopeful, and so appreciative of all the lows and in love with all the highs.

Here’s to graduating. Here’s to the rough days that created only the best and brightest nights.

Here’s to me, I’m the fucking best. And don’t I dare ever forget it.

What I’ve been consuming -

Audio

Coming Up Easy - Paulo Nutini

Love Is The Way - Thee Sacred Souls

EXCEPTIONAL - veggi, DijahSB

Visual

My mother and I have deep-dived back into our Desperate Housewives obsession and we are now flying through it. We cannot stand Susan.

Reading

Does the Future Exist? - Emily Thomas

Let time not deceive you,

For you cannot conquer time

What’s been consuming me -

This one post I saw on Pinterest -