Chronic illness

There's so much mourning with chronic illness, it's rarely spoken about until your in the midst of it. There is a new life one with accepting your illness and becoming essentially a new person with the extra baggage. Your old self is still there but you can't get back to them. I know my younger self would be so proud of me for finally advocating for us and not being ashamed that I'm chronically ill.
I may never "get better" and that will bother me for however long I have left on the earth. I carry forward my strength for every iteration of myself that has been and will come to be. I am strong for all versions of myself. And how could you be strong with everything you carry you ask. I have to be.
Nobody will come and remove my baggage from me and I don't think I want them to, they're a part of my identity. I exist alongside my chronic illness, me and it are coexisting together. I want to take care of it even though it causes me nothing but trouble, it's is a part of my very soul. I'd be lost without it, sometimes I don't know who I am outside of it.
To the world I strive to be someone of strength and security. A comforting presence and a shoulder to hold their woes. I am a person even with my chronic illness, it doesn't define who I am at my core. It's an extra bit of luggage that I carry with me.