OfPonderingWandering

My journey of turning “Why me?” into “Why not?”

A common underrepresentation of chronic illness is that it only affects one’s body. While true, chronic illness not only ebbs away at our body, but also at our mental and spiritual health as well. In this blog, I will go over my experience living with Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) and the negative impacts it has had on my spiritual health, along with how I eventually discovered how to find meaning within chronic suffering. 

I have been living with T1D since early 2018. According to current scientific understanding, the exact cause of T1D remains unknown. Yet the process is the same; my immune system attacked my pancreas’s beta cells, leaving me utterly incapable of producing insulin. 

I was around eleven at the time of my diagnosis. I remember watching my world get turned upside down, and the seeds of a thought were planted: “Why am I not dead?” As the world moved on, I was forced to dwell more on this question. 

Humans have lived for around 300 thousand years, yet if I were not born post-1921 (discovery of insulin), I would’ve gone into a diabetic coma and died. As I thought about it more, I began to view it as something post hoc, that I can only think these thoughts because I was born at this time. Essentially, I was just a series of complicated cause-and-effect relationships. 

This left me feeling empty. I was in an existential vacuum (a space where there is no meaning), and I lacked any purpose or direction in life. I was pessimistic, nihilistic, and prone to distraction. I would do anything to get through another meaningless day. And I know I was not the only one who got stuck in a depressive senselessness. 

As those days marched on. I saw family members diagnosed with cancer and grow older, friend groups part, and ultimately, the COVID-19 pandemic, which left me face-to-face with one of humanity’s greatest fears, death.

Deathconsciousness 

Deathconsciousness is the debut album of the band Have A Nice Life. The album is a noisy shoegazey grungey meditation on depression and suicidal ideation. If any album were to be the flagship (in terms of both depressive vibe and plays) of my life from mid-2020 to late 2023, it would be Deathconsciousness. 

It is no secret that life is fragile; we all die one day. Yet chronic illness is special in this way, for it shoves death in our face every day. In this particular season of my life, I developed a ‘hyper awareness’ of death as well as a nihilistic view (there is no objective meaning from life). And suddenly, I was in an existential crisis.

During this period of my life, I walled off finding meaning; both my own irresponsibility, my pain, and external factors led me even deeper into an existential vacuum. I would distract myself through rigid perfectionism as well as video games, obsession, YouTube, and porn addiction. 

I became my own worst enemy, caged in an all-consuming negative feedback loop of meaninglessness. Worst yet, it’s taken years to break- this blog is testament. I am grateful for the opportunity to go on this journey, and rebuild myself. Funnily enough, I still remember how it started: One day when I was bored out of my mind and looking for more content to consume, I stumbled across a video on Stoicism, and I was hooked. 

A Ray of Stoic Hope 

I still remember the first video on Stoicism I watched (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFkyxzJtiv4), it sparked this slow revelation that freed me from ‘existential frustration’ about my T1D. Regardless of any religious viewpoint that I could think of, my diagnosis would still be out of my control. Now, my job is to live with diabetes, not quite in harmony, but getting there!

This was around mid-2021. I then started to look into Stoicism more, and I became hooked – maybe I could improve my life for the better. The slim chance of finding some meaning in the absurdity that was my life became so alluring. 

As the years went by, I read more and more from the Stoic tradition, including Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus. Bhagavad Gita from the Hindu Tradition. Mawlana Rumi and the Quran from the Islamic tradition. The Dao de Jing from the Chinese tradition. A few Zen and Buddhist texts. And by far, my favourite book, “Man’s Search For Meaning” – Viktor Frankl. 

While reading, I would take the knowledge and apply it in a positive way to my life. I ended up journaling daily about the things I learned, and then, inspired, I decided to go to therapy, the gym, and build a meditative practice. I started to rebuild myself, brick by brick.

Now, if I were to sum up all of the knowledge from these texts, they would agree on this, 

“Each of us has an inherent purpose in life. Yet, you must be the one to find it.” And so, my search for meaning was revamped.

My Search for Meaning 

“On your own, but not alone.” – College Diabetes Network (Now defunct). T1D is one of those diseases that excels at making you feel lonely and wearing you out. And I always found it challenging to explain how I can communicate the feeling of low blood sugar. Or even the paranoid feeling that I may fall asleep low and never wake up? Well, now I know it’s possible. I just had to open my eyes. 

I started 2024 in the midst of diabetes burnout, where for lack of better words, I was done with being a diabetic. So I decided to join some diabetes communities. One of them, in particular, stuck, and fast forward to today: I now volunteer with the community on several projects, I have met friends through the community, and I have discovered a purpose in my life, as well as a meaningful and spiritual understanding of my diagnosis.

Whereby all of the (existential) suffering I went through was suddenly justified by how much this community means to me, and the tremendous potential to work alongside the diabetes community in the future.

Through discovering meaning within my suffering, I ended up alleviating much of the pain I feel, and I ended up with a new outlook on life. What is interesting is how my experience lines up with one of the meaning-making processes of Logotherapy (Therapy that helps one find their meaning):

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” 

– Viktor Frankl. 

Attitudinal: When faced with unavoidable suffering and unchangeable circumstances, we are forced to change ourselves. 

I can not change my diagnosis, nor can I change or undo all the shit that happened during the pandemic. The only thing I can do that I am responsible for is changing myself for the better, every day. Until one day, I can sit and live with my diabetes and the pain of the past. 

It is sobering to admit your life is finite, sharing that time with chronic illness and the ghosts of the past is an exceptional challenge. Difficulties arise, yet each day presents an opportunity for us to improve slowly and steadily. When we take those steps, we become extraordinary. 

Becoming Exceptional 

My journey through life with chronic illness can be defined by one question: “Why me?” Despite its simplicity and even childlike tone, this question is a gut punch, yet necessary to rid us of the bile within us. 

This question still lingers in my life, spilling out with each needle I take, and echoing like the sound of my low blood sugar alarms. It’s there, at the end of every high and low. Then what can we do? Many of us, myself included, have wandered down the paths of nihilism. We spite anything and everything, for the irreversibility of our condition, sadly, some of us stay. 

We get stuck in a resentful, empty abyss, which ultimately follows us to every place we visit, every face we meet, and dilutes any sense of grace we may feel. Yet, this intrinsic emptiness implies a possible fullness, which we must choose to live. 

But this choice will not be easy, nor will the path forward, for you will have to live through your own nightmares before you can live your dreams. In the end, this suffering is worth it; it is meaningful as it slowly transforms us into who we ought to become. 

The answer to “Why me?” must be “Why not?” Do not pass up the chance to change your life; suffering carries meaning. You are responsible for finding it. 

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