Hey there you!
Yes, it is me you can hear, and no, you're not going completely mad and I am not a ghost talking to you.
It's actually you yourself talking to you, but from the future - 2026 - to be precise, and I'm desperately hoping that you will be able to trust and believe what I am about to say to you. Because, despite pretty much everything going wrong and causing you devastating heartbreak right now, you are going to be alright. In fact, you are going to be even better than alright, you are going to be... wait for it... thriving.
I know it's going to be almost impossible for you to trust me about this, but I so fervently wish that you can hold on to this thought. I'm trying to picture you at this exact moment. Where are you? What are you wearing, and what records have you listened to today? I'm guessing 'I Love Rock n Roll' by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, and 'Feels like Heaven' by Fiction Factory will be certainties. Is it a weekday and if it is are you in school or is it half-term? I'm imaging it's half-term and fortunately, our step-father Martyn is at work, and you are at home with mum and our beloved dog, Gelert. He's already saved your delicate soul, hasn't he? On many occasions. Remember when we got him? He was tiny, only around eight weeks old, and when we went to look at all the puppies to decide which one we were going to get, there he was, the disgracefully named "runt" of the litter, smaller and weaker than his brothers and sisters, just like you are smaller and weaker than your class mates. When we arrived they were all confident and boisterous, barking incessantly and scrapping with each other and not taking much notice of us. But then, this beautiful, gentle puppy started the trek towards us with a look of longing in his deep brown eyes. With each few steps that he came closer he was knocked over by one or two of his energetic brothers or sisters. Two or three times this happened. But, on each occasion, he immediately got back up on his feet and was absolutely irresolute in his desire to get over to us. Finally, he was right in front of us and practically sank into our arms when he finally made it. The connection was magnetic and instantaneous. Somehow we both knew we desperately needed each other. Our souls connected. As mum said, we left the house that day thinking we were going to choose a puppy to bring home. None of us realised that he would actually choose us. He will bring you immense joy and much needed comfort and solace in the days and months to come, and I know you are going to love and treasure him with all your heart. One day he won't be physically around any longer, but both he and you will be okay, I promise you. He'll be with you always. Another fighter that now resides in your heart, alongside the resilient Edwards heart you were born with.
I wonder how you are coping with the CF diagnosis. It was terrifying when it happened, wasn't it? And the process itself was just as bad. Unpleasant medical procedures, being made to do things that hurt and you didn't want to have to do. You're probably still wondering why it's happening to you, pondering whether you're being punished. You're not, it's just a cruel hand that Life has dealt you. And then there's the tablets and revolting orange medicine you have to take daily, which makes your teeth feel coated and as if you have an old sponge in your mouth, and which completely ruins the taste of those mugs of tea that you love so much. I have some very good news for you. In a couple of years that medicine will be changed to a tablet, and you will be able to forget about drinking any foul-tasted medicine for a good few years, until 2024 to be precise. The words themselves are scary, aren't they? Cystic Fibrosis. CF. They are cold, clinical, and sound dreadful although you can't understand what they mean. How could you?
And home life has become an impossible mix of love, happiness and safety on the one hand, but confusion and misery on the other, hasn't it? Until five years ago your home life was surrounded by femininity, grace and gentle joy. Mum, Nain and Taid, and your mum's sister and her three daughters, your cousins Carolyn, Claire and Angie. But now, a masculine force has invaded your life, on every angle. You are being forced to play rugby, a brutal game you utterly despise. And even your beloved football games have been less enjoyable recently. You now have to play on the school fields rather than on the indoor five-a-side pitch, and you are smaller than the other boys, who seem like vicious giants in their studded football boots, eager to rake your shins at every opportunity. But, I promise you, things are going to improve in ways you can't even imagine right now. That ache in your heart, that dreadful confusion running riot in your soul, making of you a stranger from who you were until a few short years ago when mum married Martyn, is going to be subdued and relegated to the back of the classroom. And although you aren't aware of it yet, your love life is going to finally, after a few wrong turns, take you to the promised land, where you will feed on honey-dew and drink the milk of paradise. For you are going to marry the most incredible woman, and each day you will feel like the narrator of a very famous poem that is one of your favourites, although at this moment you aren't even aware of its existence. There's going to be almost unbearable loss and grief, too, as there is for every human being, but joy and beauty will pull you through, and every day you will know in your heart that you would pass Nietzsche's 'Eternal Recurrence' test with flying colours, if that question was ever posed to you. For all of life's trials and tribulations, you will flourish, even to the extent that the psychologist who helps you as part of the CF team at the hospital, during a terrifying lockdown during a global pandemic, caused by a respiratory virus that you are clinically extremely vulnerable to, is going to tell you that your joie-de-vivre is your super power. I promise you, this is true. I even wrote it down when it happened to remind myself. And you still have Oscar Wilde, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Shakespeare, Suede and The Manics to come into your life, nine precious words you probably don't even know yet, but they are going to mean so very much to you. You have Espresso Martinis to discover as well. I'm so envious!
I'm going to have to leave you now, though, as your future is currently playing out through me, and I want to make sure it's the best it can be for us both. And, you never know, but the next time you are flicking through your Thomas The Tank Engine books, or The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, try to imagine what it would be like to know that in the future you are a professional writer, a published author. I can already imagine the light in your eye and the tingle in your soul as you read this. Well, you never know, it might well be a genuine possibility, and I want you to know that I'm currently trying to put the wheels in motion to make this our reality, as, with a little help from professional mentors, and with extra funding, time and space, I fervently believe our story deserves to be told to a far greater audience than we have currently. Remember to ask the butterflies to bring me luck in my endeavours!
Be strong and give my love to Mum, Nain and Taid, and remember... I love you.
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