I was diagnosed with maybe-asthma seven years ago today.

Spoiler alert: I have asthma.

And basically all I did about it today was take my inhalers this morning, and wear shorts outside for the first time this year, and only realize it was my asthmaversary when I checked the date to write a post on Facebook commemorating my shorts-wearing. I then commented on my frustration that my inhaler flew out of my shorts pocket, because that seemed relevant to both points.

So mostly I did nothing about it. Except for whatever reason, much of my life at this point has been shaped by asthma. Not negatively, not positively, it just is. Just like it just is when I’m having a standard breathing day: not perfectly asymptomatic, not intrusive, a cough to remind me that my lungs are imperfect, and a couple hits of Ventolin before heading out to coach to hopefully keep things in check running around the gym… the gym I wouldn’t be running around in, probably, if I didn’t have asthma. Coming home to do the work and volunteer/advocacy things I definitely wouldn’t do if I didn’t have asthma. It just is, at least today, like any other thing: present, but not defining.

In seven years, I have not “grown out” of my asthma. But I’ve grown with it, grown through it. On Sunday, I’ll head back to Toronto for a National Asthma Patient Alliance Executive Committee meeting on Monday and the Asthma Society of Canada’s Clearing the Air Summit on Tuesday, World Asthma Day. My friend Elisheva, the epic World Asthma Day party thrower, is convinced I’m having the coolest World Asthma Day this year (I have to go buy glow sticks, because nothing says someone let you be Vice Chair of the National Asthma Patient Alliance like glow sticks…). And yet, for the appreciation I have of so many things that have weaved their way into my story because of asthma—and for many cool things that have occurred and many friends I have been blessed with—I have to blame/acknowledge this day seven years ago. The day where I was handed a prescription for an inhaler, and then an inhaler, and couldn’t get any of the medicine in my lungs without an AeroChamber (I’ve mastered that skill since); the day after that; the days, weeks, months, years that have followed, of learning to coexist and make life better with this disease that, even through the surprise good things it has provided, I still hate with everything in me and I know is not going anywhere.

Over the past several years, I’ve chosen to be engaged and own my asthma—just like I choose to own everything everything else. I can’t pretend it doesn’t exist, but I refuse to let it define me. I may engage in a lot of things because of asthma, I may find myself a lot of places because of asthma (c’mon, I can’t turn down a good travel perk for asthma-related good things—also have Denver coming up in May), but I engage in more things simply with it along for the ride. I still get burned out sometimes, but, I try to keep asthma in the back of my mind rather than the main focus. In advocacy, I am rarely thinking about my asthma, but rather the spectrum that this disease actually is—advocacy is not about me: advocacy is about something far bigger than I can even attempt to articulate at the end of the day. However, most importantly, I hope that the ripple-effect of advocacy and all the things I do, and my friends do, both because of and simply with asthma, are not for nothing. I hope the collective we are making progress.

I realize that I will probably have this disease for the rest of my life—so, I hope that the asthmaversaries keep coming for decades to come.
And maybe on asthmaversary eight I won’t forget until 5:26 PM and I’ll have a cupcake. Or cupcakes. And otherwise do nothing special, because any excuse to have a cupcake is good enough for me, even if it’s just another day of another year of living with asthma, instead of at war with it. I can’t be my own enemy, so I might as well be awesome instead. Even if I have to be awesome and breathless on occasion.

PS. Clearly I did not do Blog Every Day April. I barely blogged any day in April, never mind every day. Also I was unsuccessful at NaNoWriMo. I tried.