#age perception

Your needs and your body matter to me. They're lovely. I'd learn as much as I can and be here for you ❤️‍🩹

Magnus and Lestat | The Vampire Chronicles | Graphite | February 2026

Have a better look on ao3. . .

I remembered I have a #prince and prometheus tag here that needs me. And someone must give #the vampire magnus followers treats.

Magnus | The Vampire Chronicles | WIP | October 2025

These days mark the 15th anniversary of my second (and so far final) chemotherapy. I was released from hospital at my own insistence just prior to Christmas of 2009. (Of course, I was back in that hospital mere days later with a high fever due to my weak immune system.)

It seems unreal to me that it has been 15 years. They add up on paper, but not in my mind. I have spent most of this time rebuilding my physical appearance and establishing myself professionally. (Securing permanent employment in the face of considerable prejudice proved particularly taxing.)

I have never been too sentimental about my illness, knowing that others are much worse off. The human body is imperfect and sometimes fails to function as desired. Diseases (such as lymphoma) exist; some of us end up having them. All things considered, I made it through the ordeal very well, and the limitations on my life today are manageable.

The most immediate effect, though, is that I have not aged linearly. I still feel close to the age I was back then, conceding perhaps a few years, but surely not fifteen of them. I relate best to people who are the age I used to be, and I place people my own age with the generation of my parents (who, of course, have since also grown older).

I read that, no matter what age we attain, we tend to identify strongest with who we were in our 20s. So perhaps this disconnect in age perception would have developed anyway, only in the form of a midlife crisis. I will never know; none of us will. We only transition from youth to middle age once in our lives, and the experience is always subjective.

On a practical level, I am grateful to modern medicine and the dedicated medical personnel for saving my life, also to a universal healthcare system that fully covered the vast expenses of my cancer treatment. In another country, say the US, I would either be dead or forever in debt.