Missing Out

I keep trying to picture what my life would have been life had I never gotten sick. I'm having a hard time imagining who I would be, what I would be doing, and what I would expect out of life.

I got sick at a time when everyone else my age was figuring out what they wanted to do with the rest of their lives. They got to look toward the future while still being able to try different things. They got to meet new people, try new things, fall in love, and be young with years ahead of them to get serious and figure it all out. Some were continuing their education while others were finding the career path they wanted to take and others were starting families.

Getting sick changed all of that for me. Instead of getting to be free and in my early twenties I had to put everything to the side and learn how to live while being ill. I can't lie and say that I don't feel like I missed out on a lot but I do feel like I made up for it in other ways.

If I magically got better, I wouldn't even know how to start living a "normal" life. What skills do I have? What do you put on a resume after being ill and unable to work for 6 years? What skills have I developed in that time? I guess I could put things like:
· Able to show extreme patience while waiting in doctor's offices for appointments
· Has good veins and is able to have blood drawn quickly and easily
· Has learned how to push through pain and only take painkillers when pain is beyond unbearable
· Excellent at binge watching television shows when too weak to do much of anything else

So there we go, even if I was well enough to work, what would I do? It's a scary thought, although it's obviously not one that I need to worry about now. I'm just too sick to work and at the rate my illness is progressing I can't see myself ever entering the work force again.

There's so much more to it than just not having a career or a specific path that I want to take. It's also about who I could have been and all of the things normal twenty-something's are supposed to do. What about all the boys I didn't get to date? The friends I didn't get to make? I can't go back but I also don't know how to do those things now. Did I just completely miss out of my twenties because I'm sick? What are my thirties going to be like without getting to experience all of that?