Revelation (a little delayed)

Sorry I've been a little distant lately. I've felt really raw as of late and it kind of all consumed me stopped me from feeling comfortable sharing. Honestly today is a day when being vulnerable and sharing with complete strangers is the last thing I want to do but isn't that the point I do this to continue difficult conversations to make them less difficult. To not feel so alone.

So on to the next revelation. Not long after my dad entered remission in the beginning of my seventh grade year, I developed a stomach bug that wouldn't go away. My mom mobilized and rang every one's bell. She, my dad, and my doctor joined forces to figure out why I kept missing school with stomach symptoms: nausea, severe pain, and all the over symptoms one gets during a stomach bug. I will not gross you out with all the details. It took months of blood tests, doctors appointments, x rays, sonograms, my first upper GI scan and CT scan, and one specialist appointment at UVA Medical Center for me to be diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). Another year before my doctors at home with my mom's help found a medicine that would help me through my attacks and helped me make it through the school day. In high school, I developed Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD)which can often coexist with IBS.

So a grand barrel of laughs, no one wants to be different in middle and high school so that's where my surviving and playacting began. I just tried to be invisible and make everyone as happy as I could or be whatever I thought they wanted me to be. I did this to protect me for every time my IBS made me different or caused problems at school or family events or wherever as it always did. Until recently I've been playacting at my life; more concerned about what my family, friends, coworkers, even strangers thought of me than how I felt about myself. I have functioned in survival mode, just make it through the day making everyone as content as I could, that I'm not even sure I know what living is. Or how to create a full, happy, and real life.