Why "What if" makes no sense

Hello my lovely loves.

A friend recently said to me that it must be difficult knowing my life would have been so different if I hadn’t got ill, and it got me thinking.

Firstly, yes. Sometimes I look at people's photos online of their happy relationships, beautiful children, incredible career achievements and amazing trips abroad, and, as happy as I am for them (and I genuinely am), it’s still utterly excruciating. 

It hurts so much that my life is so different to what I thought it would be.

There have definitely been occasions where I wonder where I’d be now if I wasn’t sick, or even if I wasn’t housebound. Would I have met someone? Be having a family? Working at some amazing job? Going on my own adventures? And thinking about that, measuring myself to what might have been, and what others already have, is pretty soul destroying.

But there’s a problem with all of this.

Maybe I would have a beautiful, magical life where everything is sunshine and rainbows, but... I also could have been hit by lightning, run over by a bus, or fatally mauled in a freak llama-related incident.

Something people (myself included) tend to forget, is that just because things are bad now, doesn’t mean it would’ve been better if this one thing hadn’t happened.

It could also be as bad, if not worse than it is now. I could be dead; and then, even though all the things I want out of life seem so far away and unlikely, I definitely NEVER would have done them.

After all, there is no hope if you’re not here to have it.

The same holds true for the future. It’s so easy to assume that because you have an illness you never expected or planned for, it must mean that everything in the future will be worse than it would have been. But... why should that be true?

It certainly feels true sometimes, I’m not arguing with that, but just because something feels true doesn’t mean it is.

We don’t know what will happen. That can be really scary.

But it also means that maybe there will still be sunshine and rainbows, even if right now it’s bloody tipping it down.

Everyone has their ways of coping with the What Ifs. Mourning the life you had, or might’ve had, is itself a very important step. I know some people become very religious, some practise yoga, become activists, or just get very, very angry. Those are all valid, and if they help you then that’s all anyone could ask for.

But I imagine that I’ve narrowly avoided an ignominious end at the hands (or hooves) of a pack of rabid llamas. 

Maybe you should give it a try.