Posting on a Monday?! What?!

I know my posting schedule has gone out the window recently but I really want to share a couple of videos with you guys.

I’ve talked about Claire Wineland and her videos before and I’ve had this one bookmarked for ages. Claire is twenty-one years old and has Cystic Fibrosis (lots of useful information here). She’s spent most of her life raising awareness about CF and created her own non-profit organisation to support those with CF and their families. She’s incredibly wise and eloquent and even though we’ve had very different experiences of life and of health, I really relate to a lot of what she says. She’s inspired me a lot.

Just over a month ago, she was put on the transplant list for new lungs and she made a video where she talks about how that feels and what it means. And while she’s talking about transplants and new lungs and things that many of us don’t have direct experience of, the way she talks about living is universally relatable. And important.

“Transplant, for me, isn’t really just about getting new lungs. It’s not about being healthy, it’s not about fixing myself. For me, transplant is about what it means to choose to live, not in an ignorant way. I don’t believe that once I get lungs and once I’m better that everything else is gonna be better. I don’t believe that it’s gonna save me or fix me or make me any more of the person that I wanna be. I think that getting new lungs, for me, is like a representation for what it means to choose to be here, on this planet, and to just choose to try, to try to show up and be conscious and to be aware of ourselves and try and actually give something of ourselves, to not spend our whole lives just resentful of being alive, because it’s so easy to be resentful of being alive and I get it. I completely get it. It’s so hard not to fall in the trap of seeing that every single thing you choose to do in life, no matter which way you go and what you choose to do, there’s always just gonna be this… this innate pain in life, you know? There’s always gonna be someone or something that’s gonna come and yank the rug out from under your feet, no matter how healthy you are, no matter how rich you are, no matter how perfect your life may seem, or how much you’ve worked for what you have. There’s always something right around the corner that is going to come and make a fool out of you and that’s life. And it’s terrifying. And one of the things I’ve found that’s the most difficult about choosing to get new lungs is just… It opens up this well of want in me. Like, I want to be alive and I want to have the time and I want to have the energy to actually make something of myself, give something, like, make something I think is genuinely valuable, not just something to make myself feel better… I want to actually give something… and that’s really scary, because once you want something, then it opens you up to just that huge fear of failing. Like, the moment you admit that you want it then you have to admit that you don’t want to fail and you have to look at how painful it would be to lose it. So there’s just so many different layers to this. Like, it’s not just about lungs.”

The stuff about wanting to live and how scary that is really hits home for me at the moment, at this point in my mental health journey – I hate describing it that way because it sounds so quaint (and depression is anything but quaint) but I haven’t found a better word for it yet. Depression can make living feel like a struggle at best and unbearable at worst and I’m just coming out of the worst I’ve ever experienced. And knowing that someone in a different country, in a different situation, with a different life experience feels the same fear that I do… knowing that is comforting. It makes me feel less alone and it makes me feel part of something bigger than just me.

“It’s all very human, and it’s all very real, and it’s all very scary. And I have no idea what’s gonna happen.”

This video and these quotes have been in the back of my mind and on my list to write about for a while now. I just hadn’t gotten around to pulling this post together until Claire posted her most recent video on Saturday night.

I feel for her, so desperately, especially when she talks about how there’s so much more she wants to do. I can only imagine what this is like for her. It makes me so angry and upset that anyone should have to go through such stress while already dealing with such difficult circumstances: illness, treatment and medication, hospital stays, and so on. The gofundme link is here, in case you want to donate or share.

I just wanted to share her videos and her words with you guys. Her perspective on life and living has given me a lot to think about and hopefully it’s the same for you.

And Claire, just on the off chance you see this, thank you. Thank you for your words, thank you for making me feel understood even though you’ve never met me. Thank you for making me laugh and for making me cry. I’m grateful to be able to help, even if it’s in a tiny way and in a tiny amount. I have no doubt that you will continue to do incredible, important things.