By Grady Stewart
Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash
“There’s the me who existed before I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, and there’s the me who is living now after my diagnosis.”
There’s this fuzzy feeling that sticks to me sometimes when I think about the past. It’s especially prominent when I reflect on dusty memories wedged in time between late 2015, the season of my diagnosis with Ulcerative Colitis, and today. It’s sticky, soft, and sickly sweet like an overripe peach turning into a goopy marinade. It’s not an unpleasant feeling, or even unfamiliar. It flows through my body, sending tingly waves crashing through my veins, and turning all of my nerves to spiderwebs. In these periods of reflection, I feel incredibly present and grounded, yet out of place. The clips of my life are lifted out of their slots, and thrown into a random order.
Poetry aside, it’s hard to explain why I feel so odd when I think about who I was in the past. Maybe it’s melancholy. Maybe it’s nostalgia. If you ask me, it’s my body’s autoimmune reaction to change. It turns out I’m allergic to more than just seasonal pollen. When you live with a chronic illness, from the moment you’re diagnosed, the world becomes more chaotic. When I woke up from my initial colonoscopy, everything was spinning around me. That could have been the result of the anesthesia wearing off. However, it was also the first time I stopped recognizing my own body.
To go from being healthy to sick forever is a gigantic change. It’s looking into a murky puddle and seeing ripples rippling your reflection apart. You’re still the same person, but in that instant, you’re completely different too. An experience like that is enough to send anyone into a tailspin. On top of all that, when you’re diagnosed with IBD, everything else in your life seems to start changing more frequently and much faster. You change doctors. You change medications. You change diets. Sometimes, even your friends change.
You change so much when you’re chronically ill and the rest of your life starts to feel unfamiliar. Most people go through several periods in their lives. They have a childhood, teenage years, young adulthood, adulthood, and older age. I’m working my way through those life periods too. However, the difference is that change has shattered the stages of my life into two fragments. There’s the me who existed before I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, and there’s the me who is living now after my diagnosis. As a result, my past and present selves feel disconnected. The puzzle pieces of my life don’t quite fit together. There’s too many corner pieces, and not enough patchy centerpieces.
I’m learning to accept the changes that have changed my life and the changes that I can’t control. I am different from who I was, but I’m proud of who I am, and who I am becoming. Living with a chronic illness isn’t easy, and accepting a new life isn’t any easier. It means giving up on normal. It means embracing imperfect, and living with the unexpected. Over time, I’ve learned that isn’t failure or an insurmountable obstacle. Change has forced me to grow, to learn, and to adapt. I’ve met new friends, and I’ve accomplished things that I never thought were possible in the past. Acceptance isn’t a solid thing, it's a fluid and evolving process. Today, I’m less concerned about the pieces of my story being perfect. Instead, I’m happy to have a jumbled pile of pieces to put together in my own weird and unique way.
Besides, who wants to be normal anyway?