A drink with my (24-year-old deaf) self

Today is Thankful Friday.

I'm thankful there's a three-day weekend ahead of me. I'm thankful that I get to spend this with the rents. My amazing rents.

The sun had better shine because I want cups of tea on the terrace with Ma while whatever amazing new band my dad has discovered blares out of the living room.

I'm 33 this year you know.

And recently, I've found myself wondering what I am actually doing with my life.

Which is silly really because I have an amazing job, an amazing flat and amazing friends and family. 

But sometimes it can't hurt to take a good look at the patterns and cycles in your life. The things which keep happening that you wish you could change.

I'm not meaning to be horribly cryptic either. But while the good things in my life remain good. The not so good things remain not so good. And it's these I'd like to change.

But that's the thing about Thankful Friday. It forces you to look at what is good in your life. It forces you to pull yourself from whatever slump you're in. From whatever it is you think you'll never be able to do, and get the hell on with things.

I mean, I've done this before. I can do it again.

I remember when I was in my 20s, the despair I used to feel at times about my deafness. Sometimes, it used to knock all the air out of me when I tried to work out how I was going to succeed at my career, get my life organised when so much of it involved using the phone or talking to knew people.

It was horrific at times. One day, after a particularly bad day at work, I found myself walking home snivelling as I went. Willing things to be different. Wondering if they ever would be. Wondering if I would ever really be comfortable with the hearing that I had and the challenges that this threw at me.

If my 32 year old self could have taken my 24 year old self for a drink at that moment, then that would have been an amazing thing. She'd have sat me down and told me to get a grip. To power through and trust that feelings like this don't last forever.

And she would have been right.

These days, I rarely have days like that anymore. I'm so comfortable with my deafness that half the time I forget that I am deaf. I'm just me.

So the stuff that's challenging me right now. That's causing the air to be knocked out of me? I think I need to go for a drink with my 42 year old self.

I have a feeling if I did, she's tell me to get a grip. She'd remind me that this is right now.

That patterns can be broken. Cycles can switch paths and life is too short to think about stuff you cannot change.

Have a marvellous weekend peeps.

I'm going to spend it being very thankful.

DG

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