New Year , New Blog

It is, in fact, a new year. And in the midst of all these revisions, revitalizations, and renewals, I find myself battling another re word – reevaluation, that is. In the New Year, I have been reevaluating my health situation – where I’ve been, where I am now, and what it will take to get me better – and I finally had to come to terms with the fact that my current methods just aren’t working. I have overlap syndrome, a series of autoimmune diseases that sort of build on each other. Most people have an immune system that works for them, mine works against me. And when even your own body is working against you, it is tough to put up a good fight. Rheumatoid arthritis, dermatomyositis, vasculitis, osteoporosis, pulmonary fibrosis and more recently, osteonecrosis, reads the laundry list of illnesses I have to spew whenever a medical professional asks me about my “medical conditions”.

For the past seven years I’ve avoided any discussion of my health as if complete denial was a cure. If I ignore it, it will go away. All these years of ignoring have taught me that the disease just gets louder. It screams, knocks down doors, and bursts windows until you eventually acknowledge it. Positively or negatively, it doesn’t matter, just as long as it knows that you know it’s there. And so, the New Year came and I decided no more hiding. No more going around corners, taking shortcuts, diverting the conversation. The only way to tackle this thing is head on.

Part of my problem is that I just don’t talk about my illness for fear of making people uncomfortable. I don’t want to be that person, the sick person that makes everyone miserable with talk of treatments and procedures and side effects. I want to be like everyone else, or at least masquerade as a face in the crowd. It has taken me this long to realize that this journey, my healing, is just that – my healing. It has nothing to do with anyone else or their interpretation of the situation. This is my reality. It is not my life, but it is my reality. In order to truly heal, I need to talk about it. I need to be able to say, “Today, everything is sore and I feel like shit.” I need to say, “I’m exhausted from the fighting”. I need to be able to cry, if anything just to let it out. When people ask me how I’m feeling or what I’ve been up to lately, I need to feel that I can be honest and not have anyone flee in horror.

I thought and thought and finally settled on a blog as my outlet. But I didn’t want it to just be about my illness because that’s not all that I am. I wanted it to incorporate my passions and how I use them to help me heal, because there truly is medicine in doing what you love.

What I love is fashion and though I fancy myself a pretty talented writer, even I cannot articulate how I feel about the craft. The romance, the beauty, the emotion it stirs within me is unmatched. I love the culture and history of fashion and yes, even the characters it creates. I love that I can become anyone I want to be, go anywhere I need to go, all with the help of some fabric and a few embellishments here and there.

I can’t really walk right now, but I have hobbled my way to the magazine section of Barnes & Noble to buy British Vogue, Vogue Italia, V Man, and GQ Style on more than one occasion. I could barely stand in line to purchase them, literally suffering for fashion, leaning on nearby displays to support myself. It was as if the pain and the light-headedness didn’t matter; nothing did because in a few short minutes I would be leaving with fashion in my hands and would be one step closer to being transported to an alternate universe where my life is about observing and interacting with beauty and I’m not sick. The truth is that I am sick, but that doesn’t mean I should stop loving fashion and give up participating in this world. Even though it may be a while before the only bag I carry isn’t filled with IV fluid, I can still incorporate fashion into my life and let it help me to help myself heal.

So that brings me here, to this blog, where I plan to document this journey that I have been chosen to go on. It is daunting and no doubt exhausting, but through it I have humor, fashion, wisdom, and a love of the arts as my weapons. It is my sincere hope that someone out there battling disease will find my little piece of cyberspace, read my stories, connect, and ultimately leave with a little more hope. Even if you are one of the lucky ones blessed with a clean bill of health, I certainly hope that I can offer you something as well – a good laugh at the very least.