I sometimes miss how disconnected I was from my body when I was younger. Though not a monolith, I think most adolescents feel some degree of invincibility when it comes to how their bodies move throughout the world. The carefree attitude of “nothing is going to hurt/stop me or slow me down” is one that accompanies a life lacking experience (and might have something to do with an underdeveloped frontal lobe). But I think it’s a necessary part of the growth process that allows us to have lived experiences with a certain degree of fearlessness that encourages us to explore the world. 

The older I get, however, the more my body’s limitations prevent me from living as fully as I’d hope. For one thing, sleep doesn’t come as easily as it once did. As a child, I’d often fall asleep in random places whenever I got tired. As a teenager, I’d sleep for 12 hours at a time. No insomnia, no nightmares, no getting up twice to pee. Now it takes pharmaceuticals and magnesium and turning off screens in order to clear my brain long enough to fall asleep. Wash, rinse, repeat.

In 2018, I started to experience intense pain in my shoulder, swelling and pain in my fingers and toes, and debilitating fatigue. The pain would come and go and I would sometimes go weeks feeling totally fine, so I ignored it for a while. I’ve been tired since I had my first child in 2000, so fatigue has never been a good barometer for my health. After the shoulder pain woke me up in the middle of the night, I made an appointment to see my doctor the next day. Many, many blood tests later, I was diagnosed with two autoimmune diseases – one of which is called rheumatoid arthritis. There is no cure for RA, and the causes are unknown. Left untreated or if my body does not respond to the medications, the disease can cause organ failure and severe deformation of hands and feet and other parts of the body. My life, and by extension my body, was forever changed with that diagnosis. Every decision I make is now governed by how it is going to affect my disease. Food that I eat, alcohol that I consume, stress that I experience – all of these things can cause a flare of the disease. 

I’ve learned to manage my symptoms with the help of medicine and doctors, but it will never not be a part of me. I am who I am today as a result of the limitations of my body, and though it often frustrates me, it has shaped my resilience. I still would love to look at my young self and tell her to be more grateful for her sense of invisibility. Youth really is wasted on the young.