Beneath the Stars

after I had my uterus out and was finally pain free, I had all these assumptions and expectations of myself that I would - that I could - finally be a 'healthy' person instead of a chronically ill one. at first I gave myself a lot of grace, since despite surgeons telling you you can go back to normal activities after like 6 weeks I knew it could take a whole year for my body to heal from losing a major organ - but then more years passed and my chronic fatigue never went away. my health improved but whatever magical standard of healthiness that other people apparently had still eluded me entirely. still I kept telling myself that I would get there, if I just figured out whatever magical combination of diet exercise vitamins supplements medicine something that would 'fix' me ... and then my fucking gallbladder started to fail last Christmas, and I went through a whole rollercoaster that in hindsight was just the 16 years of my endo journey condensed into 5 weeks: constant pain, medicine barely managing my symptoms, confusion about what the fuck was wrong with me, every test coming back normal, before an answer was finally discovered and - thankfully - yeeting yet another internal organ was offered to me

its been six months now and while I am one of the unlucky ones whose digestive system didn't just shrug and go back to normal, I have managed to mostly get it to a place where its not a complete nightmare - and there's still hope that it will continue improving and maybe I can regain my foodie status someday, maybe.

but part of this whole recovery journey has been facing the truth that I am never going to be a healthy person

whatever combination of c-ptsd, neurodivergence, genetics, etc etc has given me a body that first of all really seems to enjoy trying to twist organs inside out (rip uterus, rip gallbladder) but secondly, and this has been the hardest thing to grasp and is honestly maybe why I'm writing this all out to grapple with it outside of my own head for a change, even if I did manage to figure out whatever combination of trauma healing that will settle my nervous system down for good (the gallbladder attacks and hospital stay and new and 'improved' digestive system all triggered layers of my c-ptsd I didn't even know were in there, so that's also been fun, yay for being back in trauma therapy!) and diet exercise vitamins supplements etc etc ..... my gallbladder ain't growing back! my digestive system is always going to be extra sensitive now due to the constant bile flow. sure, I'm hoping it will be more manageable, but that's not the same thing as being quote unquote healthy

and it feels like the more areas of my life that I look at, the more all of these dichotomies that I/we/society hold ourselves to just ... fall apart

like, am I a trauma victim or a trauma survivor? some days, hell some minutes, it feels like fuck yes I'm a survivor I survived all that and I came out the other side and I am going to live my fucking life to the full no matter what was done to me as a child. other days/minutes its like, fuck no, stop holding me up to these standards of normality that I am never going to reach, don't you know that I am a trauma victim and that's fucked me up in unimaginable ways?

this is probably all just stating the obvious for the queer, neurodivergent, disabled website, where we all in one way or another have had to grapple with existing outside the supposed norm, and wobbling between fierce reclamation of that as an identity and being fucking pummeled by a society that keeps fucking expecting us to meet whatever standards of cisheteronormativity, neurotypical-ness, abled-body having that its decided we are all 'supposed' to have and be

but quite genuinely, lately it feels increasingly like I ... don't know what to do with this, or how to even understand myself, if I'm not really either of those things.

you'd think being bi would make it easier, like shouldn't I be a fucking expert in shrugging and going yeah nah I pick all of the above when asked to choose one thing. but somehow when its a question of, what am I if I'm not healthy but also not sick? what am I if I'm not entirely able bodied but also not disabled (or maybe that should be, not disabled enough for our society's standards)? what am I - who am I - if I can't meet our society's expectations for what it means to be a person? if I can't work do I still have value? what if I can but not 'enough' to ensure my own independence?

somehow when its this stuff it just feels like I should have 'an' answer, a label to present along with myself so other people can understand - and maybe that's what it's really about, on some fundamental level. the desire for a neat little label that 'fits' me. the same way we all fit under the queer umbrella but also - often - like having our own labels as shorthand for ourselves and others. but what do you do when there are no adequate labels? when your experience of yourself and your life and who you are as a person is just .... It's Complicated

what do I do when my own value system - that every human being on this planet throughout all of our history has deserved and will deserve to have their basic needs met, deserves love and care, is inherently worthy just for being themselves, and has intrinsic value just because they exist - what do I do when that comes crashing against our late stage capitalist society that believes and espouses the exact opposite, and despite knowing how utterly bullshit that all is, what do I do when I feel like I've been sucked into that black hole of bullshit and can't seem to apply my own values to myself