For my entire life, I wanted to be a performer. I danced from the age of 4, and then was cast in the Nutcracker for about five years slowly making my way up to prestigious roles. Our family home videos are testaments to my desire to be a comic; they show my aptitude for clowning around and making a room full of people laugh, mostly at me and not with me, but I loved it nonetheless. I remember the moment I saw Molly Shannon in Superstar while I was in second grade and I thought — in the romantic way movies portray love at first sight— that she was the most brilliant woman I’d ever seen and I would be like her. So I began mimicking Mary Katherine Gallagher and Sally O’Malley. I’d prance around the hallways of middle school making all the kids laugh and it felt like power.
This was what I wanted for my entire life.
That was until I got sick when I was 20 years old. This year marks seven years of dealing with chronic abdominal distention/bloating, daily loose stool, diarrhea, amenorrhea, and thyroid issues— to name a few. As I’ve written in earlier posts, I’ve been diagnosed with several different disorders, illnesses and ailments, many of which most doctors cannot tackle or don’t have the interest in trying to in the way that it demands: with time, effort, and original thinking.