Well I was 17 when I started Fluthering, and am 20 now, which are ages where someone will change a lot anyway. Pair that with what I went through during that time period in terms of leaving for college and having surgeries and leaving for college again, and it’s not hard to imagine that I have learned a whole lot about coping. Fluther has certainly helped, too.
One thing I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned… when I made my Fluther account I was direly ill and – I didn’t know it at the time, of course – mere days away from a near-death experience. It was a very confusing time in my life… I posted maybe three answers, disappeared for two weeks (hospitalized), came back and said this:
”...right now, I could use some clarity of mind. I’ve just been through some of the most crazy, life-changing experiences of my life and it’s left my mind so scattered feeling. I don’t communicate well right now…”
Damn, I remember how that felt like it was yesterday. It’s hard to say if something like that would hit me as hard now as it did then. I hadn’t started forming coping skills back then… I didn’t realize I needed them. I was still in that naive stage where I had convinced myself that being sick had been a net gain for me, that the character growth or life lessons or whatever the fuck else was worth more than the time I was losing and the pain I was experiencing. I was too scared to admit that the shit was just going to keep hitting the fan… the word “chronic” hadn’t sunk in yet. I would have understood the stakes better if I hadn’t blacked that bit out of my mind.
Anyway, that realization inevitably happened between then and now, and that was when coping got really hard. I’m glad to say that in those three years I’ve come a long way with getting through that. Antidepressants have helped enormously too. And having jellies rooting for me and putting up with my bitching along the way has been awesome.