new diagnosis

i'm sitting on bloodwork results that may tell me if i have a new diagnosis. 

i only had it drawn yesterday, so it's a quick turnaround. i'm usually a hard stick (shoutout to my mom for passing down her hard-to-find veins), but after i sat in the chair, made a fist, and let the phlebotomist wrap the rubber tourniquet around my arm, i zoned out and only realized the needle was already inserted when i turned and saw her setting aside a third vial of my blood. "i didn't even feel it!" i told her. she only chuckled softly in response. 

i imagine what my life would be like if i still kicked and screamed and squirmed at the sight of a needle the way i did as a kid, when the only appointments i had were checkups and dental exams. "there's no shots today, right?" i would ask my mom no less than five times before entering the waiting room. now, whether something's going in or blood's coming out, i resign myself to it. it will sting for only a second, so fleeting as to barely even matter; to resist would only prolong my suffering. 

but now, it's starting to feel like refraining from resistance is tacitly allowing the universe to keep throwing medical curveballs at me. then again, what can i do but absorb the impact? how can i resist when i can't begin to understand whatever internal mechanisms are making my body like this? 

every time i have an upcoming doctor's appointment, even if it's just my yearly physical, i joke that i don't have another diagnosis in me, but what i really mean is i don't have it in me to face another diagnosis. chances are, there is another diagnosis already inside of me, waiting to make itself known. 

i want to be fine with this, to face it with strength and resilience, but i'm worried my other conditions have drained my well of strength and resilience dry. 

if i do have another diagnosis, that will mean more medications to pay for, more considerations to take when deciding whether to accept plans with friends, more reasons to worry that i'm a burden on those around me. i'm fortunate that the people in my life don't think this and that they'll remind me when it gets hard to remember. but it's extremely easy to disregard their assurances when i know things would be inherently different if i wasn't a person who constantly needs to be accommodated. 

i'm trying to take inventory of who i am, right now, before i potentially walk through a threshold that will slam shut and never again open up behind me. i'm sitting on a train as i write this. i recently turned 23 years old. i have had my box braids in for too long, and they're growing frizzy at the roots. i recently switched my nose stud out for a ring, and i'm still a bit startled every time i see my reflection or feel it when i touch my face (it also might be too big, but my friends' opinions are split down the middle, and mine changes every time i look at it). 

does anything about me change if something already inside me is suddenly revealed? does this, in combination with my plentiful other conditions, finally mean that i have made the transition from "sick person who usually copes and looks fine on the outside" to "sick person," full stop?

and yet, i'm not dying. i could have a chronic condition in every system of my body and still stop short of "believing" i deserve to be upset as long as nothing's terminal. i'm not sure if i've always felt this way or if small comments (and the time in my first fiction workshop when a peer said a thinly-veiled self-insert protagonist in my horrible short story was more dramatic than pediatric cancer patients they'd met) have planted a seed of doubt in me that's grown into a tree with a sturdy trunk and robust root system. 

the looming test results also a stark reminder of my worry that my health issues are too much to put on a partner at this age, or any age, really. though i know it's an arbitrary goal and certainly doesn't speak to every individual in an entire generation, there's a general understanding that your early twenties are meant for being noncommittal—collecting numbers and kissing strangers. above all else, your love life should be fun. 

there's nothing fun about skipping events to lay in bed with my heating pad on my back or shutting down emotionally once i reach my pain limit. even with so many people in my life who have stuck around, the thought that dominates my tepid forays into dating is "who would willingly put up with this?" 

at the same time that getting a new diagnosis would affect me, not getting one wouldn't change anything for the better. i'm still going to struggle with putting myself out there for fear that once i do a grand reveal of all the things wrong with me, i'll repel potential prospects, romantic or otherwise. i'll keep living under the fear of my body finding new ways to turn on me. 

anyway, that's enough pondering. the only thing left to do is open the results.