Carrying it Without Showing

I just stepped out of the doctor's office, tears balancing in my eyes. I reach the elevator where people are standing, and I cannot let them see me cry. So deep breaths, and carry it well without showing.

This has been the theme of my life lately.

Always misunderstood

There's always been one assumption I've hated people making about me: that my eating habits stem from superficial reasons. They think I want to be a skinny model, or my mother didn't teach me table manners. Yes, someone actually said that to my face at a table full of people. You think that's bad? I've also been told that if a guy were to go out with me and I eat like that, they would leave me at the table and walk away.

I'm sure by now you're wondering what's wrong with this girl's eating. No, I don't have bad chewing behaviors or messy eating habits. I just happen to have a really strong sensitivity to texture and smell of food and an appetite of a 1-year-old. Hell, even some one-year-olds have better appetites than me, a full-grown adult. I've always wondered whether I really give off superficial vibes, can't escape the myriad of "are you dieting?" questions.

I've lived with this and handled it quite well for as long as I can remember. I even stopped defending myself and let people flow with their assumptions.

A Brief Respite

Last year, an unexpected friendship changed things. She walked into my house one evening, knocked on the door out of nowhere. I opened it—I didn't know her. She looked around at my house, amazed by the interior decor. She couldn't stop talking about it while I stood there wondering, "Hey stranger?" In that moment, I didn't know how significant this relationship would be to healing my relationship with food.

She told me her name, we chitchatted, and she left. Honestly, I didn't remember her name days later, but eventually we started to hang out. She introduced the concept of Sunday dinners. She was a chef. We would go to restaurants, pick a meal, identify the ingredients, even ask the staff how certain things were made, and then come home and try it. We started experimenting with salads, and I learned a lot about taste buds along the way.

I didn't ask her—hell, I didn't even tell her about my digestive issues. She just had an inkling I don't eat a lot. I cooked for her sometimes; she said she loved my food. Oh, another assumption people make about me is that I don't know how to cook. I don't bother to correct that one; I'm fine with it.

I got so inspired I started experimenting with my own meals, made really beautiful dishes. Life was good. That's the best thing someone has ever done for me, by the way.

I thought, "Whoo, I'm finally okay and living," so I started hanging out with friends, partying a bit.

October Surprise: When My Body Staged a Coup

Then October humbled me really quick. I woke up in pain, so much pain. Took a day off and went to the hospital; they gave me antibiotics. A week later I was getting worse. Several doctor appointments later and no answer to be found.

I remember vividly sitting at Coptic Hospital having so much anxiety that my leg could not stop shaking. Ah yes, I get those sometimes. They come accompanied with tears and fatigue.

My life changed to booking appointments, sitting through conversations with doctors, endoscopy procedures, several tests and blood work, even a biopsy because they needed to rule out cancerous cells. Waiting for that biopsy was the longest two weeks of my life. I kept thinking about the worst.

My kitchen pantry lately could pass for a chemist. I've even learned a new term I didn't know about called polypharmacy.

The cherry on top is that after several months of tests and doctors, the conclusion is I have chronic gastritis, IBS, and GERD—all of which are idiopathic, or what you'd call "no pathogenic cause was found." I know this is a lot of medical jargon to anyone, because every time someone asks me where I'm sick and I say that, they ask me, "What is that?"

The kicker is when doctors can't find a pathological cause, they resort to "let's treat the symptoms and you need to manage your stress. Try to live a stress-free life." I am a PM—the definition of that role is stress—so my odds aren't looking that good with the recommendation given.

The Solo Act Nobody Applauds: Life with Chronic Illness

The last few months have been a cat and mouse chase, treating one symptom after another with medicines that cause more unwanted symptoms. It's a nice little loop. Being sick gives me stress and anxiety, which worsens my chronic digestive issues. We treat symptoms with drugs that cause me more issues, so we continue to introduce new drugs to the point I can't recognize my own body.

So I made a daring choice: I'm going cold turkey.

One thing I have learned through all this: you can't put it all on your friends and family to understand what you're going through. You will end up resenting them because they won't understand the burden you carry. Also, society expects you to carry it well.

Sometimes you get so good at it, people even say, "You don't look sick to me."

I had a conversation with someone I was once in love with. They said to me, "I don't usually know what to say when you say you are sick, because you have been for so long and I feel like there isn't anything I can do to help, so I feel helpless and I don't know what to say." I appreciate the honesty, I do.

Reminds me of an article from the New York Times where the author says "I love you, please find someone else." In it, Philip Hoover describes his battle with long Covid and how he told his wife Lauren to move on after 435 days of illness. He writes, "Loving your partner 'in sickness' sounds noble, romantic even. In reality, it's gut wrenching." He describes hearing his wife crying in the bathroom with the faucet running to mask the sound - that's what loving someone in sickness truly means.

Like Hoover, I've learned that chronic illness can strain even the strongest relationships. As he puts it, "The Groundhog Day of it all — managing the same symptoms day after tedious day — breaks you mentally. Then it breaks your heart." His words capture exactly how health issues can fracture relationships, not from lack of love, but from the relentless weight of ongoing illness.

Which brings me to my point: being chronically sick is the loneliest feeling ever, and this coming from someone who has grieved.

Your friends worry in the first few weeks. They will visit, they will call, but after a while they don't know what to do with your perpetual illness state. It got so lonely and so depressing, but still I had to carry it well without showing.

So back to my lesson: find communities of people who understand what it feels like, even though it's online and they are all strangers. It helps to have someone who gets it, and most often it won't be the people close in your life.

I can't count the sleepless nights or how much I have cried myself to sleep. I'd look at my contact list and realize I can't really call to vent because they will listen, yes, but they all have nothing to say, and that will break my heart harder than just keeping it to myself. So I protect the people I love by not showing them how bad it got.

Caught in an Impossible Balance

I find myself on the brink of breaking. Between the fatigue of three chronic illnesses—which I still can't believe have become my reality—and the constant demands of my job, I don't know how I'll make it through.

Work triggers me in countless ways: prolonged worry about responses, pressure for features, and endless meetings that disrupt any chance of a regular eating schedule. I can't quit because financial stress would cause worse flares, yet continuing to work triggers more flares. It's a situation I can't win.

I find myself unable to breathe at times. This heavy feeling settles on my stomach—I can't stand, can't sleep, completely worked up as everything triggers a response in my body. Last night, I couldn't sleep and kept feeling like I couldn't breathe. I had to open a window in the middle of the Meru cold, risking illness because my heightened senses made the cold air the only thing that could calm me enough to sleep.

I'm so good at masking the symptoms that even my doctor thinks I just have poor feeding habits to stay thin. My colleagues have no idea what I'm going through. They can't count the number of times I've hidden in my office to cry, or how often you'll find me in an isolated corner trying to gather strength to put the mask back on and continue my day as if nothing happened.

I recently found a sweet hidden corner at work where I can hide and let everything fall apart for a few minutes. It's become my little sanctuary—the only place where I don't have to carry it well without showing.

I'm getting closer to finding answers, but the journey between managing my health and my livelihood feels like walking a tightrope that grows thinner each day.

Pilates and Promises: The Battle I'm Winning Against Shrinking

Between the shrinking food options, the nausea hitting as soon as food hits my stomach, the moments I feel like passing out doing mundane house things—life got really quiet for me. I isolated, became really anxious, and triggered back those little morning terrors we used to have as kids. That's a topic that would need its own book, so we won't get into that. But it feels like my life shrunk and shrunk every day.

I'm standing in front of a mirror looking at myself wearing an all-black workout set. I look at her eyes. They have cried enough. The body is exhausted. I miss when I had my spark, and I want it back.

This has become my favorite part of my days when I'm wearing a workout set and a black cap. I'm playing a song I'm liking recently, an amapiano song called "Awukhuzeki" by DJ Stokie. Pilates has become my lifeline, it's my way of showing my body that we can still do hard things despite everything that has happened. It's my way of feeling sexy again in my body, it's how I know I'll get my spark back. I whisper "I love you very much and I got you and you look fantastic" and I wear my sport shoes and head out to be great.

I've carried this burden without showing for so long. Perhaps it's time to let others see—not to burden them, but to finally acknowledge my own strength. The strength it takes to live with invisible pain day after day. The strength it takes to smile when your body is betraying you.