I am surprisingly grateful for this disease. There are times I am sad about it, or scared. But those are almost always the times I am letting myself indulge in my self despair. When I just want to feel sorry for myself for any reason - self pity is almost like a rich and creamy cheese cake. You can just immerse all your senses in it and lose yourself in it if you let yourself, and the deeper you go the richer it gets. And just like a good slice of cheesecake, once it's all done and even a few hours has passed, you're none the better for it, and any vestige of indulgence you gained from it is already gone.
But when I'm not embroiled in self pity, which happens far less often now, I feel grateful. I feel like where I was just going through the motions of living, I am now actually living. I think it was the fear of losing control of yet another aspect of my life. Of losing control of my life itself. I have spent so much time fantasizing about death or at least not existing that I was so surprised at myself for caring so deeply that I might be meeting my end after all. And even that thought was being pretty melodramatic. I was so upset and scared and angry that God or fate or whatever would let this happen to me. I refused, I refuse, to let anyone control my life but myself. When and how I die will not be left to God or fate or disease or old age. My death will be my own, as my life has and will always be my own. No one will get to control it except for me.
That's what my disease gave me. Not a passion to live, but a passion to avoid death. It gave me the time and motivation to truly appreciate my mortality. My end will come. I don't know when, but I know when it does, it will be because I have decided on it, and nobody and nothing else will have any say on it.
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