Who knew?

When I was a little girl, I felt so weird, like I didn’t belong anywhere, nor my family, or at school with my classmates. And apart from this, the bullying was going to begin around me in the Catholic school I attended for quite some years. As you can imagine, this caused more insecurities in my inside, which I only could handle wearing as many masks as possible. When you’re bullied you wonder why, and obviously you’re not going to ask these mean people why they do that to you, so I only could imagine what it was exactly. To my approach it could be: my shy voice, sometimes lack of pronunciation (it took me a long time to speak properly), probably my personality, or the fact that I wasn’t very talkative. So, my way to handle all that was to totally control every little thing that I was going to say, and to keep my feelings and opinions inside of me, unless I thought they were really interesting or funny. Briefly, I’ll say that eighty percent of the times, I didn’t say a thing, just listened to everyone.

With all this, when I was a teenager, not only my ways influenced the rest of events, but also my health, though I couldn’t see the consequences. We all know, when we are youngsters, we just want to live easy and free, going out with friends and doing anything to fit in. Due to my past circumstances, having a group of friends was the best of my world, and there I was, were they accepting me because of who I was? Maybe not, but they were nice, that was enough for me. For the first time in my life I did feel I belonged somewhere. However, I used to drink alcohol and smoke, and do every popular thing to seem cool. The truth is that I loved it, because in those moments being sober and dancing in the pubs, I forgot about those “imaginary” boundaries, and was myself at least a little bit. And yes, nowadays unfortunately there are too many cases of Bullying, it really is sad to see that still there is not any way to solve this huge issue. In my opinion it’s easy to say to “be yourself no matter what”, but, when you are a kid and see that being yourself is the reason you are being bullied, you just want to stop that at all cost, no more laughs, or jokes on you, humiliations a million. Do people think this is just part of this hard life? Because if you are too weak, it will define the rest of your life for good. And the transition here is that you change so dramatically, so much that if you’re not careful, it could destroy your innermost self.

You might be thinking that definitely this is not a good example of growing up, the most amazing thing is that we tend to learn from these kind of mistakes, and it seems that this is the best way to get there, to a point in your life when you know, that after all, what is the clear message? and then feeling good with yourself. Can anyone say that is the way we develop to be the best version of ourselves? If it was than easy everybody would get to understand the reason of their mistakes and just keep on living. But as far as I am able to see, the most intriguing part of our existence is to know how to analyze the traumas of the past, and move on.

So, Who knew that in my 20s I was going to be diagnosed with a chronic illness?

Just when I thought I could have a cool life, this happened. I was 21, thinking about being a singer, but according to my mother and the rest of my family, I wasn’t good enough, so I tried to study; at college two different specialties, and later Secretarial Studies, the third one won, and especially because the First one was a total failure, really boring to me. I really thought studying English was going to work, because somehow it’s a language I have always loved, but that doesn’t mean it is not difficult, because it really was. For three years, in the middle of my sickness, it was like the impossible goal to reach.

At the beginning of my Colitis it wasn’t hard to follow through with the methods to be better, but later, due to the fact that I am quite foody, and my “party” lifestyle, I started to have symptoms, and took the medication, nevertheless it came to a moment when I realized that was expired, and the big problem was surrounding. I ended up at the hospital for one week, and the healing was slow. The next year, tired of being stuck at studies, I decided to improve my English skills in Oxford, but little I knew, this wasn’t a good idea. Because in only 2 weeks, I needed surgery, my colon was infected.

As you can imagine, this didn’t help my low self esteem at all, it was so blue to see that I was like that with 24, with a colostomy bag, always moody to go out, my friends were having normal lives with their careers, hobbies, boyfriends, but me? I was always home crying, overthinking and not understanding why it was happening to me. I couldn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.

Believe it or not, at 25 there were the other two parts of my surgery, and another friend told me to go out with her and more girl friends. That was like the most amazing opportunity that became like a second life to me. It wasn’t just the fact of going out, but to enjoy with friends who cared about me, to feel that kind of love, is the best thing in the world. Twenty years later, I finally understand that keeping feelings inside and everything about me, was the worst decision I’ve made. My body still talks to me when I don’t get off my chest properly. But I always have to remind myself of this great second chance to be the best of myself no matter what, even though it’s challenging to break old habits.

Afterwards, a friend of mine suggested me to do Secretarial Studies, and it’s been the only course I’ve finished.

Yet, sometimes I think about the reasons, do you have a chronic disease just because? Or it was the aftermath of my wrong decisions? Who knows?