Becoming Type C

I used to be so good at achieving. In fact, my entire life was built around it—“what’s next” was all I ever cared about.

Good grades. Clear goals. Big plans. A life built around constant momentum—what was next, what was bigger, what was better, and what comes after this. I knew how to strive and perform, and I believed I’d find fulfillment once I achieved the next thing—I was convinced that I’d find the ultimate happiness once I attained success.

Then my body stopped cooperating.

My chronic illness didn’t arrive as a single dramatic moment. Although I can pinpoint the exact moment in March 2020 when the illness began, it arrived quietly, then persistently, then completely. Fatigue deep in my bones that didn’t resolve with any amount sleep. Pain that didn’t make sense as an active person and at my age. A nervous system that suddenly refused to respond to willpower alone. The strategies that had always worked—discipline, grit, and the thought of the destination—stopped working.

At first, I just tried harder.

I treated my physical illness like it was a mental one. I treated the pain and fatigue like a temporary setback, something to outwork or out-think. I assumed I was clinically depressed because I was unable to keep up with life’s daily demands. I spent many days unable to get out of bed.

I had been here before. During my last year of nursing school, I was so burnt out from my full-time studies and working 3 jobs. I was also being bullied by my preceptor. I started taking Cipralex (an antidepressant) prescribed by a doctor at my university’s health clinic, which allowed me to push through until graduation. Once I graduated and quit two of the three jobs I was working, I was able to come off the meds.

“This must be depression”, I thought. So I started taking antidepressants and assumed I’d return to who I was before. Easy solution.

Unfortunately, the return never came. I still couldn’t get out of bed. In fact, the medications made me feel worse. I found myself becoming something else entirely.

I’ve since named it Type C. Not Type A, with its drive and urgency, and what I used to define myself as. Not Type B, relaxed and easygoing, and what I often wished I could be. But something quieter, slower, more fragile—and strangely more honest.

Type C lives in a body with limits. Type C plans loosely, rests often, and recalculates constantly. Type C feels apprehensive about tasks that others find simple, such managing to shower today. Type C measures competency in spoons (energy). Type C measures success in tasks completed today instead of goals achieved this year.

This shift is incredibly disorientating. Since my diagnoses, grief has been a constant companion—grief for the body I trusted and took for granted, the future I naively assumed, the version of myself who could do what I wanted without a myriad of consequences to follow.

We now live in a world where hustle culture is the new normal. Simplicity is seen as failure. Rise and grind is the expectation. If you’re content with your life, surely there’s something wrong with you. Working yourself to the bone is seen as a badge of honour. Busyness is used as a coping mechanism— if we’re too busy to feel emotional pain, we can simply ignore it. You’ll finally be happy when you achieve success and you can rest when you’re dead. And your value as a person is measured by what you produce—not by who you are.

There is shame in slowing down in a world that rewards speed and applauds self-sacrifice for greatness. There is fear in letting go of achievement when it once felt like the only proof that you matter. There is fear in stopping the performance. Listening to your body instead of constantly pushing feels wrong and unfamiliar. But, perhaps there is some relief to be found in learning that a smaller life is not necessarily an empty one.

This blog isn’t about inspiration, productivity hacks, or “finding the silver lining”. It’s about the messy middle: the identity shift—or crisis—that comes with a diagnosis. The reality is that we have no choice but to unlearn hustle culture as our default and go about the quiet work of building a life that fits the body you now have—because our lives simply depend on it.

I don’t have the answers, but I’m slowly learning to adjust. I am still grieving. I am still sad and I am still angry. I also feel deeply betrayed by my own body. And I’m trying desperately to learn how to live—and maybe even live well—inside this new constraint.

Here, reflection takes precedence over resolution.

I am becoming Type C in real time. If you are too—I invite you to stay awhile.