Tomorrow is my 34th birthday. Another year older. Another year worrying about my timeline. Birthdays are supposed to be milestones of joy and celebration, but for me, they can also come with complicated feelings.
In my 30s, I imagined life looking different. I thought I’d be further along in my career, maybe building a family, maybe checking boxes that so many of my peers already have. Instead, chronic illness is often rewriting the script. I find myself looking around and wondering, Why can’t I be there? Will I ever get that?
The reality is that my path has never been typical. Ever since I can remember, illness has shaped my life and my journey has looked different from most. Each diagnosis has carved a detour and left a scar, each flare has forced me to slow down, and each day has reminded me that my life moves on a different timeline.
This feels like a cycle. I start to feel well enough to make important plans, to take a leap forward, to move on. Then comes a flare for some inconvenient reason, like ‘there’s bad weather coming, I ate something upsetting, I can’t wear shoes today because my feet are too swollen.’ It’s sudden, overwhelming, and unforgiving. The flare feels like a domino effect: symptoms piling on top of each other, routines disrupted, progress undone. And just like that, I’m back at square one.
Physically it’s exhausting, but it’s that mental battle again that makes it’s even harder. I am rebuilding a house over and over again, only to watch it crumble each time a storm passes through. That cycle makes it easy to lose hope and I often question whether I’ll ever get to stop it.
The world around me can be very unkind. Society measures life in milestones like the career ladder, marriage, children, financial independence. Family and friends ask well-meaning questions or make statements without realizing the invisible calculations happening behind my casualness. Every setback pushes me further away from what I’ve always wanted.
This doesn’t just push me mentally , it make me question my future in very real, physical ways. When my body feels unpredictable, I wonder:
“Can I even have kids?”
“Will that be taken from me?”
“Will I find someone who not only loves me, but also loves the parts of me shaped by chronic illness…the bad days, the unpredictability, the limitations?
These aren’t just passing thoughts. They are the kinds of questions that echo, reminding me that illness can shadow the future, too.
Before my 30s, these questions didn’t even cross my mind. I was so focused on just surviving, managing symptoms, and getting through each day that things like children, marriage, and long-term stability felt far away. But now, there’s a clock ticking in the background. A reminder that time moves forward even when my body holds me back. It adds another layer of pressure, and not just from society or peers, but from myself. The weight of when will my body cooperate, when will love come, when will I get to step into the person I’ve always wanted to be?
Reading all of this back, it might look like a lot of complaining or like I’m stuck in a cycle of victimhood. But the truth is, I don’t want pity. I just want to be honest. For years, I let illness write the narrative for me. Today, I’m learning to shift my mindset. To acknowledge the hard stuff without living in it, to find gratitude alongside grief, and to see myself as more than “the sick girl”. I can’t control the bumps or turmoil my illnesses bring, but I can control how I carry them and how I choose to heal. Even in this frustrating loop, I’ve started to see that I’m not actually back at square one. Each time I rebuild, I bring something with me, like new strength, new lessons, a little more patience with myself and others. Maybe healing isn’t linear. Maybe it’s circular, and each lap still moves me forward in unexpected ways. I’ve lived a lot of life in the last several years and I have so much more I want to do.
So, for my 34th birthday, I’m giving myself permission. Permission to stop measuring my worth against timelines no one was meant to follow. Permission to grieve the things I’ve lost and celebrate the things I’ve gained. Permission to dream, even if my dreams take longer to arrive. Most of all, I’m giving myself compassion and grace to keep rebuilding after every storm, to appreciate the messy in-between, and to believe that my time will come.
Here’s to another year!