Have you ever felt like you were alone? Like you’re the only person who goes through what you go through on a daily basis? I feel like that a lot of the time, when I’m in pain, or something IBD related is acting up. Whenever my health isn’t being co-operative I find it hard to think that SO many other people go through this, and worse every day, just like me.
People always like to say that someone is going through worse, but I’ve always said that even though someone is going through worse then what I’ve gone through, my worst is as bad as I know it. So to me, my worst, is THE worst. I know it might sound conceited, but it’s true. You only know your worst, and someone else’s worst, even though you know that there is worse, is never going to mean as much as your worst.
I’ve always felt alone, even after I became involved with the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of Canada. I’ve never felt like anyone knew what I was going through, I always knew that people were going through things along the same lines of what I was going through, but it still always felt like I was alone.
I’ve had so many people say that they were by my side no matter what, that if I ever had to go through things that I’ve gone through before that they would be by my side, but I never quite believed them. Not until now!
I know my family is always going to be by my side, but I guess I always just saw that as something they had to do. I saw it as something family would do regardless. I mean, they are my family after all, and they always will be.
I never quite felt like someone who didn’t have an “obligation” to me would ever be able to prove to me that they would be there. I never thought that someone outside of my family would be able to make me feel like I don’t have Crohn’s Disease. The guy I’m dating right now does though. He makes me feel “normal”, if there is even such a thing. He doesn’t act like I have Crohn’s Disease, he isn’t constantly asking me what I can eat, he isn’t always asking me how I’m feeling. I’m normal. I’m Colleen, just Colleen. I’m not Colleen, his girlfriend with Crohn’s Disease.
I don’t even know if this makes sense to anyone, but to me I feel different. I guess I feel like I felt before I was diagnosed, but to be honest I can’t say that for sure because I don’t really remember a time when I didn’t have Crohn’s Disease. Perhaps because I don’t want to remember a time when I didn’t because then it might make days when I just can’t forget that I have Crohn’s Disease even harder.
It’s the little things that make my boyfriend amazing when it comes to my Crohn’s. Like when I’m in pain and I’m rocking, the fact that he will hold me and rock with me. Then there are my Remicade infusions. I hate them; they’re long and boring. When I first went to an infusion and we were dating, he wanted to be there. He was texting me the entire time I was in the hospital saying that he should be there, that I shouldn’t be there alone. He didn’t see it as something he had to do because I wanted him there; he actually really wanted to be there. He was working, and that was why he wasn’t there, but he still couldn’t accept the fact that he wasn’t there.
I guess it just takes that one person, and it doesn’t even have to be a significant other, to make you feel like you again. I feel like I can take on the world, because from day one with him, it didn’t matter that I had Crohn’s, it mattered who I was, and that wasn’t someone with Crohn’s Disease!
“I have Crohn’s Disease, Crohn’s Disease does not have me”
~Colleen Lynn
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