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Many ask if it was possible for me to be born without my disease would I chose that? My response may surprise you, but I would say no. I've prayed for many years that God could use the bad of my disease to bring good to others and I have begun to see that being played out. If I hadn't suffered first I would never understand someone else's suffering to the extent I do. There are countless lives I never would have had the opportunity to touch if I didn't have my disease.
Because of you gastroparesis, I know what it is like to suffer and be in pain and therefore I am able to empathize with people on a different level. I have developed an incredible passion for the medical field. A passion that was sparked at a young age. I want to be able to help others who are suffering because I know what it’s like.
I went through the next couple of years dealing with the pain associated with eating. Then in July of 2011 things took a turn for the worse. I would eat a meal at night and the next morning would still be full. I usually went for a run each morning. Sometimes that helped the food move through, but other times I would vomit food, from the night before, at noon the next day. I was confused, but didn't say anything at first. I didn't want them to treat me for an eating disorder again. I thought I was past all that. Eventually I couldn't keep silent anymore.
They didn't admit me to the psych ward that time. They let me go home at three in the morning. I took a taxi back to the building and wondered why I was still alive. It wasn't a 'I'm going to try and kill myself again' type of wonder. Just an idle wondering of what the point of my life was. I didn't make a difference. I didn't matter.
I'm 31 and all this manifested from whispers of my name whilst sitting in front of my art locker in high school. Whispers of Anna, Anna. Back then I was 16, and maybe all this started when I was younger. A time when I would obsessively ask myself, why aren't I a squirrel? Self awareness, self existence seems to always dance in my head from time to time.
My teacher signed to my class, throughout the year, how accepting the deaf were of people outside of the deaf community and reminded us if the deaf participants signed too fast, at the events, to tell them to slow down and to inform them that we were beginning signers.
Learning that there was nothing ‘wrong’ with me took years. And along with that, I learned many other things, vital life lessons that I should have been taught as a child. I learned how to say I wasn’t okay. I learned how to fight back. I learned how to be angry. I learned how to be me, an agender asexual bisexual person with Bipolar II and an eating disorder. I learned how to scream. I learned how to love.
I just wasn't getting it, I thought. Then I met Tina and she reframed my train of thought. “Depression is like a disease,” she sympathized as tears rolled down my cheek one at a time as if they wanted to be fair and give each other recognition; my family didn’t acknowledge this statement. Depression was something that was trumped and not coddled.
Deep rooted unhappiness tends to dwell when left on its own. It is like a visitor that you never actually invited over. This visitor drops his/things off in the spare bedroom with no intention of leaving. Depression can rest within a person forever. Unwatched it will grow, slowly suffocating its life source with no avail. Hope for relief can seem like a distant wish that may never be granted.
The gathering is called a tea party, and there are a few different speakers who share their stories, and their struggles with cancer, or as cancer care-takers. Some local high school students sing a song, and they ask how many survivors are year-long survivors. Then they ask about five year survivors, then ten, and so forth. I’m sitting next to Jennifer knowing that she cannot raise her hand for any of these benchmarks; that she has her speech in hand and that she wore her new dress for the occasion.
