i have my own house. filled at times with my very own boyfriend. and every day, my very own cat.
i have discovered the source of my four+ year illness. gluten. and the cure was as simple as a change in diet. but i can't help but wonder what damage was already done. how many problems will i have later in life because all the doctors misdiagnosed the symptoms? because i wasn't pushy enough. because i was tired.
and i can't help but wonder how far back the damage actually started happening. before there were any symptoms. was it years, months, weeks?
was my irrationality and iritability always caused by the allergy? were the hypoglycemic feelings i had as early as age 5 caused by my body's inability to absorb nutrients? is that why i never really had much athletic stamina? or was i just not a good athlete? was i just burning calories too fast for my little body? was i just naturally bitchy?
at this point, it can't really matter. but at least now i find myself happier. i've opened back up. my imagination works again. and i don't feel the need to get up and run.
i find my mind wandering again. and not ever really into the darkness that it sometimes would go. my emotions are real again. which is somewhat difficult because of the age timeframe. i "matured" having my emotions out of whack. i got to know myself as an unhappier someone else. and feeling the way i did every day made me older. it made me tired. and it didn't have me looking forward to the next ten, twenty or thirty years. and now it's like some sort of midlife crisis. except its a quarterlife crisis. i missed a lot of what they call "the best years", unless you ask someone older and then those best years keep getting up in numbers. i'm not upset by it, but somehow slightly worried. do i start over, back at 21? do i just sort of pretend that none of this hellishness never happened? because either way, it was a good lesson of sorts. a definite way to make sure i don't take for granted a "normal" day. a painfree day. a day lacking mental frustration.
i almost emailed an ex the other day. to apologize for having put him through my hell with me. to let him know i figured out what was wrong with me and to reassure him that i wasn't myself. to apologize for being unable to do so many things. for being so utterly uninteresting because of my inability to handle day to day activities. but then i realized i have nothing to apologize for. it was no fault of mine. i tried desperately to have "a better outlook". to be energetic. to be anything but what i felt.
and i don't really think that many people can understand how it feels to feel that badly. to try to describe something like it is extremely difficult. it wasn't just the physical pain that was so horrible. it was the overall feeling of degeneration. my body didn't feel very alive. and for very good reason as the allergy or sensitivity or auto immune disease (whatever you want to call it) is described, how could you feel very alive?
for now, my words of 26 year old wisdom would have to be:
if you feel like there is something wrong with you physically, mentally, etc. there may very well be. research every symptom with every possible cause. research every disease listed with those symptoms and compare them. i had three separate diagnoses. which, if anyone had paid attention closer (including myself), they would have realized that the one problem causes all of those three.
also, don't ever underestimate the power of alternative medicine. the procedures themselves may not solve your problem but the attention that most "healers" give to you might just be what you need to deduce your problem.
and always, always, always be willing to change routines, diets, etc even if its just for a month to see if it really will help.
i have a lot of people comment that they would never be able to give up pizza, cookies, pasta, beer, etc. if the alternative was laying in bed for weeks crippled with pain and being pissed off, i'd think that giving it up is a fair trade.
