I have a confession.  I have been in a dysfunctional relationship for the past three and a half years.  It started one afternoon with my heart beating out of control and it has been a love/hate relationship ever since.  When things are in sync life seems bright and possibilities endless.  However, when there are long wrestling matches, I wind up jaded and broken, tired and hurt.  While tackling this relationship the past couple of years, I thought I could make it work. This relationship hasn’t made sense for a long time and it is one I must reconcile because I am not speaking of my marriage or my parents or my best friend, I’m speaking of my health.

2006 was definitely a stressful year: Graduating from grad school, the terrible job search, turning down a job I could see myself loving, but knowing it wasn’t where I was supposed to be. I also started therapy to face my torturous inner voices. And on top of all of that, I came face to face with many family members awful perceptions of me as a former fundamentalist that was once upon a time more interested in the “right” way rather than the loving way.  It was a long year, and in August of that year, my thyroid, which unbeknownst to me had been pissed off for months prior, really let me know how mad it had become one day by speeding my heart rate up to 120 beats per minute (resting).

What ensued have been rounds of doctor appointments, hospital visits, ER runs, pills, and hormones that have been out of whack for 3 years (God bless my husband).  I’ve spent countless hours praying and crying, wishing for answers,wondering if my body will ever “feel normal” again.  I have seemingly been in a constant state of PMS or menopause for years (yes, I put myself in menopause – I was 26).  Every day waking up is an adventure, “What will I feel like today?” And so the relationship has proceeded through murky, uncharted territory.

I’ve spent a lot of time and money trying to get healthy.  I nuked my thyroid a year ago and it took 10 months for my body to re-stabilize… now I must deal with the aftermath.  I am missing an organ.  I have to take a pill each day for the rest of my life.  Even though I respect modern medicine for making all of this possible, I still find it incredibly weird. I knew I was breaking up with my thyroid, but I didn’t think I was murdering it.  I thought it would still be in my body, although dead, but like an old boyfriend’s picture that you stumble across or spotting a similar car that you made out in when you were 16. I didn’t know that I was literally excommunicating it from my body only to replace with a monthly Target pharmacy purchase.  “It’s in the Los Angeles sewer system,” my ever so eloquent doctor told me when I learned it was “gone” in October.

It’s taken me a long time to write about my struggle with my thyroid because of one fact: I don’t want to be the “sick girl.”  I don’t want people to feel sorry for me or, on the other hand, not think me capable because I’m “sick.”  I want people to see me for me and that is the realization I am starting to make sense of because I am sitting here in bed for the third time in five months getting over another 48-hour fever.  My immune system is jacked up.  That is the polite way of putting it.  Trust me I’ve tried everything to boost it – garlic, vitamin C, Echinacea, the list gets old after a while…

The thing I hate most is what I have to do and that is just sit in it and wait.  My body has been through too much for its age, but this is the hand I’ve been dealt. Some women have been dealt much worse hands like cancer or watching closed loved ones die.  Worse yet are those whose stories are not told - abuse and rape survivors, war victims, and those who have left this earth way to soon. 

In my own story, what I wrestle with most of all is that no one really ever promised me health.  Not even God.  There were a lot of people that Jesus did not heal when he was on earth… I wish that weren’t the case.  I know next week I will be out of bed and operating closer to 100%, but I think that’s the myth.  I’m always 100% me even when I’m sick.  I might not be at full capacity, but I am still me.   I hope I get new cards, but I keep picking up “ear  infection,” “flu,” “hormonal imbalance.”   And all of this takes time to sit in and get better.  As a perfectionist, that is extremely hard because you can’t “do” sickness perfectly.  I want to get better and help people… the world needs me.  But the truth is I need the world more.  I need help and understanding and when the sick are shut up behind closed doors, the understanding starts to slip away.

This relationship is one I have to fight for understanding and trust me, I believe that I am healthier for it.  It just might not get me the cover of Self Magazine though, and I’m trying to be okay with that too.  Comparisons are not worth living your life for.  So in a week when everyone is trying to pick out their celebrity twin… I’m working really hard at picking out myself.  I’m trying to make sense of it all and sense of just me.  Some days it makes more sense than others, but that’s life right? It would be easier to pick out a celebrity. Sitting in bed, trying to make sense of being sick? That’s no easy task. I do it because I hope that someone somewhere can find hope in her own mess.  Because life is a beautiful mess.