I still remember the first time I listened to the song Where’d You Go by Fort Minor. It was June of 2016, and I had just recently been diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and finished my last semester of high school. It had been a semester of overcoming pain and fatigue to drag the shell of my body across the high school finish line. With those less than stellar circumstances, I was overcome with emotion hearing the lyrics describe in words exactly how I was feeling:
She said "Some days I feel like sh**,
Some days I wanna quit, and just be normal for a bit,"
I cried then, and I still tear up occasionally listening to the song and thinking back on that period of my life. That is the power of music, the ability of the songwriter to share their feelings in a way that connects with another human. It grants the comfort of knowing that others have experienced the same things you are experiencing now. That can be powerful for those of us with IBD, because it can be so easy to feel isolated and alone in our struggles.
Today, I want to take you through some songs I feel reflect the IBD experience for me. I encourage you to listen through the links as you read.
One song I keep going back to is Times Like These by Eden Project. The first verse starts out with what a lot of us feel sometimes:
It's been a long, long time
We've come a long, long way
No, I can't see the finish line, scared half to death, but that's okay
It's been a long, long night
After a long, long day
My body's aching, but I know somehow, my feet will find a way
I don’t know about y’all, but I can think of at least a dozen times I felt like this with my IBD. It can be so hard to try to imagine the finish line when the reality of your disease forces you to acknowledge the present instead of looking toward the future. And that is scary. When day and night you are exhausted just putting in the bare minimum effort, you can forget to look at the big picture. I don’t even have to tell you how much I relate to the body aching line. But the great part about this song is that it doesn’t end there. Near the end, the artist sings:
These are the times we will hold
In the silence, when I've given all of me
And it's alright that it's over
And I found fight, like a soldier coming home
In the silence, but I have never felt so free
The future's so bright, this is our time
And I'll live it how I dream
It is beautiful how the artist not only changes the lyrics to reflect the hope, but if you listen, the entire mood of the song changes as well. The tempo speeds up, the instruments are cheery, and there is a joy in the tone of the singer. I know when I had flares in the past, it didn’t feel like a time in my life worth remembering. But I do look back on those times in my life now and see how they shaped my future. I see how I was supported and loved by family and friends, and how it gave me a feeling of gratitude for every new day on Earth. Some days you won’t be able to see the finish line, but eventually you’ll look to the future and it will be so bright.
Another song I feel encapsulates the IBD experience is Mountain at My Gates by Foals. It starts out with this verse:
I see a mountain at my gates
I see it more and more each day
What I give, it takes away
Whether I go or when I stay
Doesn’t that just sound like the IBD experience? We have this mountain of IBD in front of us, and sometimes it feels like it takes away everything from our lives. The beautiful thing about this song is it is about overcoming that mountain. The second to last verse goes like this:
Oh, when I come to climb
Show me the mountain so far behind
Yeah, it's farther away
Its shadow gets smaller day after day
Sometimes our disease can just feel impossible to overcome. But one day we will come to climb, and we will have realized we have conquered that mountain. We will look back, and see all that we have accomplished. Whether it is overcoming a flare, graduating college, or just taking a shower this morning, we all have mountains ahead of us that are made more difficult to climb by our disease. That just makes the view that much better once we reach the top.
Please leave a comment with any song you felt has been an integral part of your IBD journey, I would love to give it a listen.