"Oh, Sorry, I Have ____"

Imagine that you’re standing in front of your family, hair pushed away, as they inspect the back of your neck. Across the base of your neck and the insides of your thighs, you have dark lines that strongly resemble dirt, yet they do not come off no matter how hard your grandmother or father scrub. You’re sent to a strange facility in a big city where they scrape your skin and inspect your body intimately while your father holds your hands and assures you that it’s totally alright, these doctors and nurses are trained and pass no judgment other than the kind that will help you become healthier. You are eleven years old and diagnosed with an underactive thyroid, and you begin taking your first pill. You don’t notice a real difference, but everyone says you must take it to feel normal, so you do.

Two years later, imagine that you’re an insecure, internally struggling freshman trying to stay afloat above the culture shock of high school and toxic relationships you cannot escape. You’ve been getting ill to the stomach frequently, and the insulin resistance marks have reappeared within your thighs along with ugly, spindly stretch marks that claw up your arms, your sides, your backside, and around your belly button. You travel to a local hospital and take a concoction that tastes like dull Kool-Aid, and you fight to keep it down long enough to have your blood redrawn and the diagnosis to come back with pre-diabetes. You are put on your second pill, one that you take morning and night; it makes your digestion and expulsions Hell, but you finally learn you feel better when you take it. You are thirteen years old.

Two years post this, and your stubborn walls are beginning to come crumbling down. Since you were very young, you’ve always had issues believing that you were good enough and that not everybody hates you or thinks you’re a failure. Your mother has been pushing for a diagnosis for years, but your internalized stigma against mental illness has kept you from seeking the help you’ve always needed. Post a few traumatic experiences, you finally relinquish and are formally diagnosed with an anxiety disorder that would later to be expanded on, and you take the first pill that makes you feel more calm and in control than you’ve ever felt before. You are fifteen years old.

Since you were thirteen, you’ve found yourself in agonizing pain at irregular times of the month. Your abdominal area feels like it has knives in it whenever Mother Nature alerts you that you are very not pregnant, and it sets on a tidal wave of uterus lining that has you doubled over for up to ten days. You were previously diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome and put on oral birth control, but now you are seventeen and in emergency care for a cyst they found years ago that has grown to encase your entire ovary and has left you unable to dip your tongue in water without dry heaving; needless to say, you are in unspeakable pain and dehydrated, and the surgery that took place thereafter left you relieved of the torture but too weak to function for weeks. You are only seventeen years old and diagnosed with endometriosis shortly thereafter.

Fast forward another two years, as this seems to be the order in which unfortunate events generally occur in your life. Imagine that you're lying on your back with luminescent hospital lights beaming down on you as you depict exactly what hurts and how much to your primary health care physician. Your knees have been locking up more frequently than you feel they should be, and when you wake up each morning, you seem to grow only stiffer as the day wears on, so you came to him for a diagnosis. He seems troubled, almost like he knows the answer to an inquiry that typically only older people bring up. He is honest; he tells you the likelihood and tells you he’ll have to run some blood tests to know for sure, but the odds are far from your favor in coming back with a bill of health less tainted that it was before. When the reports come back, he diagnoses you with rheumatoid arthritis, and you are put on a pill dosage to alleviate pains that grow constantly along with pills to cure the anemia the medication causes. You are freshly nineteen years old.

Now that I’ve attempted to put you in my shoes, I feel confident speaking you to directly when I say that my health has been a rollercoaster that only seems to go downhill. Up until October of 2017, I’d known I wasn’t like my peers in that I took three pills to balance out my otherwise insufficient sugar and hormone levels, but the consensus that I had an autoimmune disease hit me harder than any of my previous ailments before. My body is yet again trying to kill itself, this time more directly, and its left me with swollen joints and a hollow shell of what someone my age ought to be able to do with no effort. Activities such as walking long distances, bending over, and even typing this send pain all across my body, and I have to take breaks more often than anyone my age ought to. Those who don’t have this affliction judge me—and trust me, those who have the best intentions occasionally misunderstand me the most—and I’m left frustrated, isolated, and alone with all that’s failed in my young body along with the fear of what could possibly be next.

On television shows and in news outlets, there are countless amounts of people who talk of survival and triumph over ‘all the odds’. These individuals have put on their best/most dramatic faces and depicted their lives, discussing their struggles and sending messages of hope and resilience that echo across a broader range of audiences. While they’re all well good and inspiring, I cannot help but wonder how many times these same people have stood on the edge of giving up, their souls crushed and hearts bleeding with sorrow, and have nearly slipped or taken the plunge into a darkness from which there is little return. I wonder how many mornings they laid in bed and were unable to move throughout a 24-hour period, how many nights they spent thrown over a waste receptacle, and how many times they’ve screamed out to whatever deity they believe in and demanded why it had to be them to endure such hardship when they believe they are good people. I know too well of days that are going seemingly fine ending with a border mental breakdown when something trivial doesn’t go easily, like trying to shower without sitting down, and it seems to make all the progress you’ve made crash around you as it disappears.

This article has been intense and likely quite depressing to read, but I do have messages of hope. I have learned to live with my new realities, from saving foods that will go right through me for my beloved nights into wearing various braces to move entire living spaces alone to teaching others about the benefits and effects medicine has had positively on my mental health. I’ve never been a very ‘active’ individual exercise-wise and I largely prefer to stay indoors, but it seems I go out and do even more now than I did before my RA diagnosis. In many aspects of my life, I am flourishing and happier than I’ve ever been, but that does not take away from the illnesses I bear alone being stowed away at the bottom of my metaphorical backpack of health, lingering in my mind and occasionally wreaking havoc by coming back up to the top.

The truth is, overcoming the obstacles and looking past what hurts you without being overly noticeable to others isn’t where your strength lies. It manifests in how you allow yourself to be weak and vulnerable, asking for help and reassurance you’re likely too proud to request usually. It manifests in taking the time to learn and be kind to your body, and giving it rest and supplements when it signals it needs them. It manifests in saying “I’m sorry, but I have ___ and will take a little longer, so go on ahead” or otherwise telling others that you will not compromise your safety and health for their convenience. Yes, it most certainly manifests in coming out on the other side of the statistics, but it shows just as radiantly when you learn to live with your affliction(s) and become largely content with your unique reality.

As a creative writer, cosplayer, performance artist, and a social butterfly, I take what I have been given and do my best to manage them while not letting it dictate the forefront of my mind. I am still learning regardless, and reckon that I always be as I navigate adulthood and becoming who I’m meant to be, and I have had to learn that it is perfectly, undeniably, completely okay to be aware, to talk about, and to accommodate to my health 24/7, 365, even when the day is mundane. People with little to no health issues will tell you to get over it, to put it behind you, and to stop making a "big deal out of nothing," but it is very important to know they have no idea and it’s okay to forgive them for it.

Let me be clear: Letting it become the end-all, be-all of your life is not healthy, either. But those who have never and likely will never go through what you do cannot begin to comprehend it, and that is alright. Despite how they may deliver what they’re trying to say, they likely have your happiness in mind, and only wish to see you living a productive, joy-filled life in spite of, not with your health.

I encourage any and all of you to find salvation in a community of people just like you. I am blessed to have built a community of those with mental health and physical issues alike, and it is been valuable beyond compare in my darkest hours. Learn how to take time to pamper yourself and give yourself slack, for you are only a human, and there is no shame in admitting this and knowing when to bail or tap out. Continue educating those you love with no idea of what it is like to live the way you must and have patience with them and yourself as you continue your quest to become a happier, healthier, and successful individual.

I will leave you with this: Imagine you are whatever age you are now. You are thriving and you are failing, but you know regardless, there is a light inside that refuses to die. You live here and now, breathing with a beating heart and open eyes, and you know that there will be much hardship and much victory in the near future. You ache silently, invisibly, but it makes you all the stronger and more stubborn to continue doing what makes you feel alive. You have survived all your worst days and lived through your best, and my hope is that you are now ready to gather your heart, your health, and your mind, and continue to do so long after you finish this article.

Good luck, you irreplaceable, bold, and brave human, you. You will always have an invisible encourager in me, and with due time, within yourself as well.