All my life, I've struggled with vulnerability. I think this is an attempt to break that barrier. 

Lately, I've been reevaluating my life in a way that is as liberating as it is concerning. Part of me wonders if this is a mid-life crisis, but instead of buying a corvette, I bought a bucket hat. 

In a way, I've always existed in a state of panic about life. Long story short: a few months after I was born, I suffered a heart attack that permanently damaged my kidneys. At 17, I received a kidney transplant. Doctors told me shortly after that the average person can typically have 3 transplants in their lifetime. They then casually mentioned if taken care of properly, each kidney can typically last 10-15 years. I'm not good at mental math, so I had to wait until the appointment was over to calculate my life expectancy. 

Being incurably ill has been a fact of my life. I've found once you've forgiven your situation, you acquire a strange sense of freedom that accompanies you. The tired trope of "living like you're dying" is somewhat true. What they don't explain; is you have to come to terms with dying first. 

My death isn't an immediate thing- but being given a timeline makes the prospect of living a much more confusing task. 

For a long time, I used it as an excuse to be angry with the world. To fuck as many people over as I could because I deserved it. I deserved it because I was dying. To drink and fuck as much as I could; because that's what life is about. Misguided in what living for now meant, I was living to die. I had no plans, no goals, or direction. None of it felt necessary. I planned to ride until the wheels came off. I met my mortality every day when I woke up and saw my scar staring back at me. To cope with this, I built a facade of carelessness that calloused me over time. 

I believed I could convince myself I didn't care about anything. I didn't care about dying, so that meant I didn't care about anyone or anything. That image, in itself, took more care to upkeep. 

The truth is, I care deeply about a lot of things, but I wouldn't allow myself to show that because that'd be fricken gay, dude. It was easier to let people hate a version of myself I didn't even really agree with. I hoped, over time, my feelings would dissipate. For a while, I thought they did. Then I quit drinking and started crying every time I watched a Dodo video on Facebook, like a middle aged wine mom. Something about a monkey hugging a duck does it for me, man. 

Recently, I've watched people close to me experience their final days, and in my family, it seems we die with our regrets. Part of life is about learning from those who came before us. I know now I would regret not being wholly me and experiencing life on my terms. That includes feeling those feelings I denied myself for so long. Life is about love, and that takes care. 

So I got myself a bucket hat because who can be mad at the world in a stupid ass hat?