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6:50pm July 20, 2013

cfconfessions:

“Sometimes I feel really awful for being okay with/kind of “looking forward" to having a shortened lifespan (I’m projecting about 50 personally). Especially since we lose members of the Tumblr CF community occasionally. Their deaths sadden me, but mine does not.“

-Anonymous

I don’t have c.f. but I have an ambiguous lifespan. As in, I’ve got precarious health (especially a combination of gastroparesis and bronchiectasis that interact terribly during aspirations) and frequently face emergencies that could kill me. I could die next week or live forty more years. I’m guessing maybe ten or fifteen more, but it’s impossible to know because my conditions are precarious rather then definitively terminal.

And I’ve long since made peace with my own death. I don’t think that has to say anything about anyone else’s death. It doesn’t mean I think it’s okay that someone else dies young.

It just means I’m emotionally ready for whatever happens. And I think it’s easier to live fully if you don’t fear death.

I mean it would be one thing if you were running around saying people with c.f. or disabilities in general are better off dead. But you’re not. You accept your own death, may even welcome it when it comes, and that’s one possible way of dealing with your own mortality.

Personally I accept my death but will fight it to the end because I only get one life. But once it’s totally out of my hands, I’ll accept and even welcome it, because without death nothing could live. And I’ve seen death close up enough that I’d characterize it as friendly, even if the method of death isn’t always pleasant, death itself is nothing I’d fear.