Rebuild? You have no fucking idea.

Rebuild
riːˈbɪld/

verb

1. build (something) again after it has been damaged or destroyed.

Rebuild. It’s a funny word. I don’t mean funny ha-ha. I mean funny ha. Single Ha. The one that people use when they don’t have it in them to find the funny side, or they see the irony. The bad ha.

Many people look at “Rebuilding” as a good thing. “It can be new and improved.” But we all know that actually by the very definition of those words that there is no physical way that something can be New AND Improved. It is either one or the other, so pick one.
It’s not easy, because really both mean the same thing – what was there before wasn’t good enough, so we tore it down and we started again, either completely or under the disguise of improvement. It’s very easy to suggest to someone who they rebuild, but for the person who faces that prospect it is a devastating and daunting task. A task that is very scary when it is in reference to your life – or more accurately, your health and the way it is affecting your life.

This is a prospect that I face. Although I have a hospital appointment in 10 days to hopefully move towards getting better, but recently I have also come to the decision that if it isn’t good news at the hospital, that it is time to just accept it and try to accept that this is life from now on and move on. I know I am lucky, I have a wonderful family, a loving fiance and I don’t have anything terminal. I know that there are people a lot worse off than myself. I thank my lucky stars daily for not making me seriously ill with a condition like cancer, but at the same time I curse those stars for doing this to me. I think back over my life and I try and think of anything that I could have done differently or try to pick out a reason why this is happening to me. Did I do something so bad that I deserve this? I am yet to find anything that I think justifies it. So I battle the demons of “This isn’t far” daily. I think I’ve done quite well at not letting it consume me. I do give in every now and then and I have a cry to myself when no-one is around. It’s not a little cry either, it is a sobbing my heart out, difficulty breathing, can’t see from tears and even probably snot. But most of the time I try and keep positive. “It could be worse” I tell myself and others. People say to me all the time “You are being very strong about this, I’d be a mess” and other useful things like that. Well, here I am, tell you all that I’m not strong and that I am a mess.

I am 27 next week and my life – apart from having found the love of my life – is nowhere near where I had always hoped and planned it to be. The expectations and the dream versus the reality are polar opposites.

I always thought that by 27 I would be: Engaged to the man I love, living in our first home together, I’m a primary school teacher, planning her wedding and planning when we’d be welcoming our first child.

Where I actually am at 27: I’m engaged, living with my mum, with no career or any hope of one any time soon, and therefore no hope of buying our first house anytime soon either.  I am planning the wedding, but it’s a wedding that I might not even be well enough to enjoy fully, and facing the fact that I might never have children. Waiting to see if another Dr and hospital can correct the mistakes made by the other one.

So if I go to the hospital in 10 days and they tell me that they don’t think there’s anything they can do for me, then it’s time. It’s time to “Rebuild.”

God I hate that word.

Nevertheless it is something that I must start to do.

If you put “Rebuild” into Google, you get a lot of these “Motivational” Posters and quotes. Yes I put motivational in quotation marks because in all honestly I don’t think of them that way. People are telling me I should be motivated by them. I however find them condescending, and patronising and full of shit really. Look… see.

You know what really pisses me off about these? Most of them are clearly written by people who have never really had to “rebuild” anything in their lives. Maybe they suffered a break up, or didn’t get in to their dream university, but I am willing to put good money that the people telling me that these fucking things are meant to motivate me have never had to deal with their life falling apart before their very eyes as their body failed due to someone elses negligence. These people have never had to face the idea of giving up on every single dream you’d had since a little girl. I don’t mean those really big dreams either that are personal to each person, I am talking those very conventional every day dreams; the dream of the wedding day you’ve always wanted or the dream of having kids.
Want to know what my dream is these days? I dream that one day I am able to make plans days, even weeks in advance and actually being well enough to fulfil those plans.
I dream that one day going to the supermarket doesn’t leave me in so much pain I have to be carried to bed. I dream that I will be able to walk my dogs again.
I wish that on my wedding day, I am well enough to actually put on my beautiful wedding dress and that I won’t have to wear pyjamas and that I will walk down the aisle and not be carried because I am too ill.
I dream that one day soon I will be able to get a job, literally any job. I dream that one day I wake up and I don’t have to take 15 pills and won’t be in agony.

So you see, this is why I say fuck you to all these posters. A personal favourite is this one:

I can’t tell you how loud I said “FUCK YOU AND FUCK OFF” to that fucking piece of shit up there.

Firstly “Never be afraid to fall apart” Only a person who has never had to face the daily, hourly struggle that is living a life that is by definition falling apart would have the arrogance to write such a thing. You have no idea how scary it is to live a life where everything you ever knew and believed to be true and wanted are just gone one day. They are no longer at your fingertips waiting for you to touch them and put them in to action, they are now a blur on the horizon. They aren’t really in focus anymore, but you struggle, you really fucking struggle to keep them in focus and within touching distance. You have to sit there and watch that whist you have no control you have to let things slip by never knowing if you will ever achieve what you had always set out to, or will get back even a flicker of who you once were. You are left in a void. There is nothing there. Just you, your fears, your loss. Emptiness. It is fucking terrifying.

“It is a opportunity” – Again, please see above if you think that truly falling apart is an opportunity. Maybe in the romanticized, Hollywood way it is. Maybe you got dumped and passed up for promotion, and its time in your life to be single and enjoy it, and to apply for the job you really want. That is an opportunity.
But when your life has truly broken and fallen apart, rebuilding isn’t an opportunity – it is a necessity. You try and gather all of the bits of your life that have crumbled away or shattered and you try and glue it all back together. It’s like dropping a china cup on to a concrete floor. You can find as many of the main pieces as you can, but it’ll never be rebuilt properly, fully. Never again.

“The way you wish you had been all along” – FUCK YOU! I was very happy with my life and myself the way I was before all of this happened. Do you know what it is like to live a life you barely recognise. To be a hollow shell of the person you once were. My life was great, I worked, I was in love, I had a social life, I had a body that people would go to the gym for daily naturally. I was happy, I had plans, I had always overcome anything that stood in my way. I got meningitis for fuck sake and they told my mum they didn’t think I’d make it… I kicked it’s arse. I made it.
But here I am, a virtual stranger to myself and you are telling me that this is a good thing, this allows me to become someone else again. Why? Why can’t I go back to being the person I was before. Before all of this? If I get to rebuild my life I will be aiming for what I had before. I don’t want anything more, even a fraction of what I used to have would be a better life than I can even consider these days.
Who are you to tell me that I need to better myself? Can you even comprehend living a life where your previously healthy body just no longer works. It is failing you, and that there is no rebuilding. No doctors will touch you because of a previous doctors mistakes, and you are just left, not knowing your future, just in pain, and lost and missing what you lost.

It is like an old car that keeps failing it’s MOT that you can’t bear to part with, you keep patching things up when they go wrong, or you just ignore the weird smell coming from the engine or the smoke coming from under the bonnet. You could go and buy a brand new car, but you don’t want a new one, you want the one you always had, but suddenly they are telling you “We can’t get the parts for this car anymore, it’s too old or too broken” or the mechanic won’t look at it because the last guy you took it too did a bad job. Meanwhile you’re there, trying desperately to get it running properly, but it’s spluttering and almost not starting when you turn the key in the ignition, dreaming of the day you first got this car, and how quick it used to be, and comfortable and everyone told you how nice it was…

I am getting too angry writing this. I need to stop.

My advice as I sign off is this. Before you try to tell someone that they have the perfect opportunity to improve their life and rebuild it better than ever, do not assume that they are unhappy with the life they used to have. Remember the definition of “Rebuild.” They are facing something in their life that has been damaged or destroyed. Who are you to tell them what to do and how to do it. Think if you are someone who actually knows what it feels like to have to rebuild something fully. Properly.
They could be clinging on to the thought of getting back to where they once were. If you are going to tell the person to rebuild, help them. Allow them to get to where they were before it all went wrong, and then ask them if they want to go any further… or if they are happy and want to maintain it where they are. Not new, and not improved. Just old and familiar.