Thai food, feminist prose and angry girl music of the indie rock persuasion.

Junger, G. (Director). (1999). 10 Things I Hate About You [Film]. Touchstone Pictures.

Fuck you.

I say this wholeheartedly and in complete sureness, fuck you. It’s because of you that I am stuck, while I watch everyone, I give a damn about move on with their lives. They go out and they celebrate while I’m vomiting in the toilet or can’t get out of bed. While they are going to school together and joining clubs, I am busting my ass trying to complete the bare minimum of work in a constant state of brain fog and underlying pain, without flares. They go out and get part-time jobs while I show up at the children’s hospital once a month for consumer engagement groups. They drink and take illicit substances – I sort through the overwhelming amount of prescriptions. They sleep through the night and I wake up screaming and scratching at my abdomen.

I want to say that you stole my childhood and consumed my life, but it’s not that simple. You are all I’ve ever known. I hate that you are my life. You are me. That you’re the reason I was three days old for my first catheter. The first time some foreign object was inserted into me. That you’re the reason my early years consisted of electrical therapies and endless streams of penicillin and sheets soaked in urine and sweat. You morphed my bedroom walls painted with butterflies into the hospital curtains, and you hid in the shadows behind each one. At eleven my parents settled to split, so while they were sorting that – I was curled in a hospital bed and you took over my life. Infections became constant. I needed surgery. For my birthday at post-surgical twelve, you gifted me with incontinence, intermittent catheters, hypersensitive nerves, and so many drugs. Lost a few years to this until I readjusted to my new normal. And then once again you shot me down. Fifteen and sixteen were met with more invasive treatments – vaginal exams, balloon catheters, interferential, and TENS therapies. And you introduced me to some of your friends. Now there’s a whole gang of you – neurogenic bladder, chronic pain syndrome and vulvodynia, and severe depression and anxiety. You guys are my life. You consume me. I can say it now. 

Going back to the surgery, they cut me open and discovered you did a lot more damage. My elongated urethra wrapped around and compressed my organs; my ureters and urethra were dilated so much so that they no longer connected to my bladder; my bladder was as hard as a baseball and forming pockets of air and urine. The stent insertion transformed into a bladder reconstruction and more. Doctors cut me up and put me back together. Sometimes it’s hard to see whether it was good or bad. The surgery meant that for the rest of my life I will be reliant on medications and catheters and will forever be attacked by you. Though I suppose there was always a chance of that.

I still sometimes wake up in the middle of the night clutching at my abdomen. It’s an entirely terrifying experience to have someone inside of you – even more so when you wake up and everything has changed. I was paralysed from my waist down and had tubes and wires coming out of almost every part of my body. No one talks about medical trauma. No one told me I would scream whenever someone woke me up. No one told me that my body would remember the pain. Remember every part except those periods when everything is blacked out because of all the pills. No one told me I would have a panic attack whenever I entered a bathroom. No one told me the pain would never go away. No one told me I’d be stuck with you forever.

You left me immobile for a year or two – that period is kind of fuzzy. I remember the constant pain, you repeatedly dragging rusty daggers down my back on both sides parallel to the spine. It’s not a feeling I can forget. I remember the complete fatigue you caused me; at my primary school graduation and confirmation, I didn’t have enough strength to hold up my head. My parents worked as a neck brace and caught me when I collapsed. You stole my appetite. I never ate. Started to look like a bag of bones and a ghost of my past self.

Now at sixteen, I’ve only recently been allowed the privilege of bodily autonomy. You’re still there, dictating my every move. But I understand you better now, and as a result, I understand the best and worst parts of myself. Just when I am supposed to be experimenting and well, be a teenager! You too have stolen that right. Not only can I not try these things, but I also can’t even complete my treatments. Every time I try you stab me from the outside in. What is supposed to be the most private part of myself is being constantly attacked by you. You dictate the clothes I wear, the treatments I conduct, and the pleasure I experience. You disgust me.

When you first showed up, people cared. They visited me in the hospital and sent flowers. But when you didn’t stop, when you kept making me sicker, when you forced me into hospitals, when my medical notes started to exceed the binder, people stopped caring and stopped sending flowers. When you were the only part of me, when I was at my very worst – doped out on pain meds, unable to move, barely able to think – I can only recall one or two friends who still cared. And though they cared, they couldn’t understand. Nowadays people try to be more understanding, but they don’t get it. They don’t understand what you do to me. They don’t understand that most days getting out of bed is a marathon. That I need clean facilities for treatments if we’re going out because otherwise, I risk further infection. That every minute of every day I am in pain. That a pat on the back is probably going to make me scream. That their successes are my losses. I am happy for all of their successes, but I can’t celebrate with them. They’re graduating? I just dropped out. They’re celebrating? I can’t move. I am happy for them, but you are always there for me. You have single-handedly isolated me from every person I’ve cared about at some point. You make me sick. And it does hurt to watch the world move on without me.

You have been the single most influential part of my life. You made me who I am today. You have traumatised me and have left me isolated from just about everybody in this world.

I am sick. Not dying. Just sick. So, fuck you.

Sincerely,

Your reluctant captive