I clung to the flannel sheets below me as my head pounded with piercing pain. Another day, another headache, but I was all too familiar with that scenario. My life became merely the act of survival. I saw my mom scatter frantically in the hallway outside of my room as she spoke with a nurse at the Mayo Clinic. Phone calls between Rochester and my house were not a rare occasion. We talked to them more than we talked to just about anyone else.
“It’s her head again,” my mom offered, a hint of melancholy mixed in her voice.
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I could not hear what the nurse said back to my mom. All I could hear was the pounding of a nail in my brain, but I had a feeling that it was something about how I should be taken to the Emergency Room, which was now like my home away from home.
“What do you mean? I just talked to you guys a couple of weeks ago. She just turned eighteen,” my mom said, clearly flustered.
“She is in too much pain to talk on the phone,” she pleaded desperately.
My mom quietly made her way to the side of my bed and bent down as she whispered, “Katie, I need you to tell the nurse that it is okay that I can talk to her about you.” I did not understand. My mom had always taken care of the communications between my doctors and I.
“Why?” I asked. “They always talk to you.”
“It’s because you are eighteen now and that means you are a legal adult,” she replied.
The thought of being an “adult” was not as satisfying as I once thought it would be. Honestly, it was scary; just by turning another year older the world writes you off as an independent grown-up whether you are ready for it or not.
I held the phone out about a foot in front of my face to avoid making my migraine worse.
“It is okay for you guys to talk to my mom,” I murmured. Just those simple words were almost unbearable to utter. I gave the iPhone back to my mom and she smiled as she retrieved it. I could hear a voice faintly from the speaker, hoping I wouldn’t be forced to talk again.
What happened next, I don’t really remember. The only thing that I recall from that day is the pain I was in and the realization that I had. It was the first time in my life that I was referred to being an adult. I was granted this freedom, but I wasn’t so sure that I really wanted it. I mostly just wanted for my migraines to go away. All I could see was the image of my brain swelling with each tick of the second-hand. I only could smell the sterilization of a hospital room, which carried an odor so strong that I could taste it. I heard a hammering that never ceased. My head was the one thing I came in constant contact with.
My life was not what an eighteen-year old should be experiencing and the day I was first referred to as an adult was the day I realized that for once in my life I didn’t want to be growing up. I was reminded of how I was too consumed by pain to feel liberated or at the very least, think I was. It was meaningless for me to be called a grown-up because the only thing I did with my life was try and survive the torture.
I believe that independence should be a state of complete freedom. The day that I was encouraged to accept independence has always felt wrong to me. The reason for that is quite simple; I was only free in one category of my life; my parents were not able to communicate for me without my consent. I would not call that a liberty, however, because it occurred when I still very much needed their assistance in such a sensitive matter of discussing my chronic health issues. I was in a prison of pain without a way to express the horrific details of my physical state, so how was I supposed to talk on the phone? It’s so strange how you spend the majority of your childhood wishing you could just grow up already, but then when you do, you want more than anything to go back to being that young and oblivious kid who didn’t have a care in the world. Control of your life holds more consequences than you ever think it will. We always take the present for granted, don’t we?
Since that day that my parents were told that they needed me to sign a series of forms that said that I am fine with them talking to my medical providers, I have had to sign multiple documents in order to give my mom and dad the opportunity to figure out how to help me from a health professional’s perspective. I have even had to create a verbal password that my parents have to give to any Mayo Clinic personnel over the phone when they wish to speak on my behalf. If I would have known how freedom worked when I was a little girl, I wouldn’t have wanted it so badly because in reality, independence is just having more responsibilities regardless of whether one wants them or not. My adulthood came before I was ready for it and it has really forced me to grow up faster than anticipated. Now days, it is really common for people to tell me that I am “Wiser beyond my years.” Maturity is not as glamorous as I hoped it would be. I still have days that I have to remind myself that I am only nineteen and not thirty-five. Now I understand why people say not to grow up too fast; it’s because if you let life pass you by, you don’t get to experience all of the wonderful moments that you are intended to.
