Feeling old

You’re young. You’re 15, 16, 21. Whatever. You’re under the age of 30.

And you feel like you’re 95. Your bones creak, your joints ache, your muscles groan. You’re tired. You’re cranky. You feel like you have no time for things that are “fun” because you’re too busy just trying to put your entire frigging life back together.

And you know what? That blows. I’m totally there right now. I’m 20, and I’ve had CFS for nearly 8 years. Note that that includes my entire adolescence? Yeahh. Not cool.

I kind of feel like I got benched during my adolescence. I also feel like I got drop kicked into adulthood. Pretty much all not fun things.

So what do you do now? How do you stop from feeling like you’re ancient when you’re very, very young?

I think the first step is finding hope. Its about realizing that while you sometimes feel old and like your life is over, it is most definitely not.

You are still going to go out and accomplish totally awesome things. Life still has so much in store for you.

But right now, you can’t see that, so it doesn’t even matter. We need to talk about stuff that’s going to affect you right here, right now. In this moment, if you feel like you have no future, the first thing we need to do is get you back to feeling like you have a future, and like you’re still a kid.

Do things that make you feel young.

For example, if you’re a girl and like most girls, you are going to love shopping. Shopping malls are probably also your worst enemy some days – full of people, loud, crowded, chaotic.

Go anyway.

I’m not saying do this every weekend – clearly that might be too much. But plan a day at the mall with your friends. If you need to leave because you feel sick, that’s fine. But try and get there anyways. It will help you feel like a teenager, or young adult again.

If you hate shopping, fine. Find your equivalent.

If you’re a guy, and playing basketball makes you feel like you’re still young, then go play basketball. Or football. Or soccer. Or whatever. Sure, you’re going to pay the price for it, physically. You’re also obviously not going to play the best game of your life. But you will have done it.

For both examples, you’re going to have to prepare for the consequences – you could feel really sick for the next day, maybe the next few days. Maybe the next week.

But you’ll be happy. You’ll have happy memories.

And don’t pressure the occasion either – don’t make it something where you have to have a “totally awesome amazing time”. Then it will get all screwed up.

Just focus on doing something normal, and feeling normal and healthy and young, and not like your entire life is being incredibly stupid. Its that feeling of “right now, everything is okay” that you’re going for, not necessarily a mind blowingly amazing day. You’ll probably have more fun if you just relax and let things unfold.

I know this is advice that’s going to scare everyone around you and maybe it’ll scare you too. What if it makes you feel really sick?

Well, it might. But it probably won’t cause a permanent relapse. In fact, the happiness you’ll get from going out and feeling normal will probably offset any horrible side effects you have anyways.

Okay, but what if I’m so sick that I can’t even get out of bed? How do I feel young then?

First off, if you’re in a place where you’re that sick, big, big hug from me. That is awful and I am sending happy, healing thoughts to you.

“How much are you able to do?” is the next question. Can you sit up and watch TV? If so, watch some kids movies. Watch movies that make you laugh til you cry. Watch funny TV shows. Watch movies about the things that you’re passionate about.

Love to dance? Watch “Save the Last Dance”. Love basketball? Watch “Coach Carter”. Like watching people kick ass? Watch “300”.

Note the theme of all these movies? People overcoming huge obstacles to achieve their dreams and goals. (Hey, maybe like us…?)

You feel up to reading? Read some good books. Read some good blogs.

And if you feel like it? Have a good cry. Cus all of this junk blows. And we shouldn’t even have to be excavating our youth. But we owe to ourselves to try. We owe it to ourselves to reach for something higher than the destiny everyone else has decided is ours.

We owe ourselves happiness.