Seeing Isn't Believing

"Everything is going to be okay."

I know that. I know that it's going to be okay. I just wish that I knew how! I wish that I had some idea of what I should be doing right now to help make it okay.

I have said, or thought, similar things over and over and over again these past couple of years.

I know that all things will work together for my good. I know that everything will turn out alright as long as I continue to live faithfully. I know that I'm never alone. I know that Christ can help me to heal. I know that Heavenly Father can create beauty out of my ashes (Isaiah 61:3).

I know.

But sometimes it is so hard to really feel like everything is going to be okay when everything in your life seems to be falling apart. Sometimes I would love to catch a glimpse of, not even the end game, but the next step at least. Sometimes I would really love to just understand how things can possibly work out when nothing seems to be so far. And sometimes it's really easy to discount the things that actually have worked out because they are overshadowed by what seems to be a mountain of things that haven't.

During fast and testimony meeting this month, one sister said something, I don't even know what exactly, that sparked a thought for me.

In the scriptures we learn:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 
Hebrews 11:1

Yea, there are many who do say: If thou wilt show unto us a sign from heaven, then we shall know of a surety; then we shall believe.

Now I ask, is this faith? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for if a man knoweth a thing he hath no cause to believe, for he knoweth it.

...faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.
Alma 32:17-18, 21

And it came to pass that Ether did prophesy great and marvelous things unto the people, which they did not believe, because they saw them not.

And now, I, Moroni, would speak somewhat concerning these things; I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith.
Ether 12:5-6

Now, I've read and heard these verses many times throughout my life. I've studied them personally on multiple occasions when I've been struggling. And yet it wasn't until that testimony meeting that I made a connection that I had never really consciously made before.

I feel like when I read these verses, I think of big, obvious miracles like Moses parting the Red Sea or Christ healing the blind. You know, ones that are very clearly miracles. Ones that absolutely could not have happened without Divine intervention.

When I think of people demanding signs, I think of stories like the one that Elder Christofferson shared in this past General Conference about the prophet Elijah proving to the priests of Baal that their god was not the true God by having them both pray to their "god" to set fire to a pyre with a sacrificial offering on it.

But I realized that those thoughts of "couldn't I please just understand how everything is going to work out?" is the same thing as asking for a sign.

Show me proof that things are going to be okay. 

Write my next step in life on the wall or send it in a dream. 

Where are the words in my head telling me what to do next?

I often ask to have my fear replaced with faith, but I think that what I really keep asking is to have my faith replaced with knowledge. And that's no bueno. Because faith is believing even when you don't see. Believing that Heavenly Father has my back. That He really does know exactly what He is doing with my life. That He really can give beauty for ashes.

Even when I don't see what He is doing. How He is protecting me. How He is guiding me. How He is strengthening me.

One of my all time favorite scriptures is 1 Nephi 4:6-7. Well, 6 through the very beginning of 7. I've talked about this scripture in a previous post and I'm sure that it's not the last time that I'll talk about it.

This is after the most well-known verse in chapter 3 about going and doing. After the sons of Lehi have tried not once, but twice to obtain the record from Laban. This is the moment where Nephi really puts his words into action. He said that he knew that the Lord would provide a way (1 Nephi 3:7) and here he is proving that.

He says that he was "led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do. Nevertheless I went forth."

Nephi had no idea how he was going to get the record. He and his brothers had tried a couple of different approaches and Laban made it clear that not only would he not give them the record, but also that he wanted them dead. But Nephi knew that "it would all work out" because God had told them to get it, so by golly they were going to get it.

And so he went back to the palace with no plan. Not because he hadn't given it plenty of thought. Not because he hadn't already been doing his best to figure it out on his own. But because he knew that it was time to simply trust that Heavenly Father was going to make it work. He couldn't have known that he would find Laban drunk, or that he would be able to easily convince a servant of Laban that he was his master. All he knew was what God asked him to accomplish and that God would help him accomplish it.

And so he "went forth."

I may not ever be asked to leave my home to create a whole new nation on a different continent, but I am asked to live righteously and trust God.

And I do.

Or, at least, I try to. I actually try really, really hard to. And yet, because I am very much imperfect, I still find myself asking "how is this going to work out? I just don't see how this can possibly work out!"

I find myself asking to be able to see how it's going to work instead of being content to just believe.

And the thing is, Heavenly Father has proven to me over and over again that He really is more than capable of working everything out. He stopped me from marrying an abusive felon. He enabled me to stay out at school with zero funds and no income. He helped me to face a paralyzing terror of dating to help me to meet and marry my incredible husband.

I HAVE seen miracles. The past two years has been one trial after the other, but also one miracle after the other. And none of these miracles came in an instant. And none of them were hinted at by the Spirit to soothe my conscience. I didn't see a single one coming.

But they came. And they keep on coming.

And I am still facing seemingly insurmountable trials. And I am still afraid. And I still find myself wanting to catch a glimpse of everything happening behind the scenes. But I really do know that everything will work out. I have no idea how. I have no idea when. But I know that it will. Not because I have seen how, but because I believe.

That's what faith is. Not seeing, but believing because you've seen it before.

So no, I may not know how things will be okay. How I will fully heal from abuse and trauma. How I will be able to be a good mom someday with all of my mental and physical illnesses and injuries. How I will get back to taking classes and doing well in them so that I can graduate. But I know that God knows. And so I will simply trust that the Spirit will guide me, and I will go forth.

I don't have to see and understand. I have to believe and press forward. And as I do so, everything is going to be okay.

We're All Just People Part Two

A few weeks ago I was at a red light when I saw the car in front of me rear end the car in front of it. Just barely. The car immediately stopped and parked, as did the car in front of it. I wondered what was going to happen. It was hardly a bump, but I’ve seen people completely freak out over things like that. Out of the front car came a young woman. She was wearing some sort of head scarf and looked to be Indian or Arab. Out of the second car came a black woman maybe in her forties. I don’t know what they said, but I did notice that there didn’t seem to be any contention. They talked for a minute or two and then got back in their cars and kept driving.

Last night I was driving by myself around midnight and it was raining slightly. I saw a car on the side of the road with its flashers going. Now let me tell you, every time I see a car on the side of the road like that, I immediately have two thoughts; I want to help, and what if they’re a rapist? I always, always want to stop, but I rarely do because I’m a young woman with little body strength. But last night I stopped. When I got to the car, it was empty, but the door was wide open. I peeked inside from as far away as I could, and then turned back to my car. There were two black men walking towards me on either side of my car. I calmly kept walking towards my car and when I got close enough, I asked if the other car was theirs. It was. Long story short, there was nothing that I could really do to help, but they thanked me for stopping. Then we both went back to our respective cars and I kept driving.

Both of these examples could have gone south very easily. Not because someone was Arab or black or white, but because there are angry people out there and there are sketchy people out there. What's interesting to me, though, is that I never would have known the ethnicity of the drivers of the cars around me if they hadn’t had to stop for some reason.

I’ve had this idea swirling around in my head for a few months now. I’m not quite sure where it came from, but it’s been there.

I hadn't planned on writing another "We're All Just People" post, but the thought kept coming back, so here we go.

This is the basic idea:

There are so many people with a multitude of different prejudices. People who won’t associate with people with different religions, skin color, political views, etc. And yet they trust them.

Let me explain.

When you are driving your car, you don’t know what kind of people are in the cars around you. You have no idea if the drivers are black, white, Muslim, gay, Democrats, Pro-Choice, transgender, Catholic, or atheist. But you trust them not to swerve into oncoming traffic. You are logically cautious, but you ultimately have to trust everyone else on the road if you're going to convince yourself to drive.

That thought has really stuck with me.

Because you can’t pick and choose who you are on the road with. You can’t only drive on roads with people that you agree with. You drive with anyone and everyone that's on the road with you. And you inherently trust them. Not to say that you aren’t wary of the cars around you. Of course you’re keeping an eye out for a car that’s weaving or cutting you off. You understand that driving can be dangerous. But it’s also an everyday part of life, so you aren’t really necessarily afraid every time you hit the road.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we treated all social interactions like we treat driving? Trusting other people to do the right thing? To do their best to be safe?

However, on the other hand, I also really hate the way that people treat driving as well. Again, let me explain.

Have you ever accidentally cut someone off? Or driven onto the rumble strip because you were distracted or tired? Well then, someone has probably cussed you out from the car behind you at some point. Not because you're drunk or even a really bad driver necessarily. No, it's because you're a human being and that means that you're not perfect.

Wouldn't it be nice if the person flipping you off instead thought of you as a person that could have any number of things going on in your life?

Here’s another real-life example:

A few weeks ago I was driving. I don’t remember where to or what the circumstances were, but I do remember the drive.

Let me explain something really quickly to you first though.

I’m not a great driver. I’ll openly admit it.

Here’s why:

Instead of the three paragraphs that were originally here, let me just say that because of various circumstances, I didn't get my license until I was 19. I've never had my own car, so I didn't drive many places after I got my license either. Then I was in a no-car mission. Then out at school, still with no car. All in all, I really haven’t driven very much in the past 5-6 years that I've had my license, so I still have a lot to learn about driving.

Okay, now that you understand why I’m not the best driver, let me get back to my story.

I popped two curbs while turning at different points in this trip.

Strike one.

I accidentally cut someone off because I didn’t see them in the rear-view mirror. I looked. I double-checked. I signaled and moved over. But when I got over, there was a car RIGHT THERE honking at me.

I was shaken from almost hitting someone and then being honked at (understandably because it was a safety concern), so I didn’t turn my turn signal off right away.

Strike two and two and a half.

I missed a bunch of turns and exits.

Steeee-rike three.

Now here’s the thing. I get flustered REALLY easily when I drive because I know that I’m not the greatest at driving. I try to be careful and do everything right, but I mess up. A lot. And because I have anxiety now, being flustered can very quickly turn into panicking.

I was flustered when I popped the first curb. I was border-line panicking for the rest, which made me even more prone to making mistakes. Luckily no one was hurt during the duration of this drive.

The point of me sharing this highly embarrassing driving story is that you never know what people are going through.

I’ve driven with people that get major road rage. That immediately start bad mouthing other drivers. And it makes me shrink inside. Because I know that a lot of the time when I drive, I’m probably the one that people are bad mouthing.

And yeah, sometimes it’s obvious that someone really is being a jerk or super reckless. But most of the time, the judgements and name calling is based off a singular event.

Whoever I cut off may have thought that I was being a major butthole. Someone who saw me pop a curb or turn around, yet again, because I was clearly lost may have thought that I was drunk or high. But I’m not and I wasn’t.

I’m just a person, doing my best to drive safely, just like most everyone else on the road.

In general, we’re all okay with each other when we’re driving. We subconsciously trust each other to a certain degree. We don’t give a ton of thought to the cars around us. We don’t appreciate when someone signals properly or goes the speed limit. But then we definitely get upset when someone doesn’t. And for some reason the anger is so immediate and so explosive.

I wish that people really lived the idea of giving people the benefit of the doubt. Rather than exploding with expletives, remember that the person driving the other car is a human being, just like you.

Maybe they’re driving a bit obnoxiously quickly because their wife is in labor. Or too slow because their fragile grandmother is in the back of the car. Maybe they honestly didn’t see you before cutting you off. Maybe they’re trying not to have a panic attack before they can find a safe place to stop. Maybe they are still learning all of the ins and outs of driving, but have their license, so can’t have the nice “Student Driver” magnet on the back of the car anymore.

Wouldn’t it be nice if, when we got in our cars and started driving, we didn’t just trust that the cars around us won’t hit us, but also that the person in the driver’s seat is doing their best to be a good driver?

And wouldn’t it be nice if we thought of people in every situation the way that we think of people when we drive? Not looking at everything that makes them different that we don’t like or agree with, but simply seeing them as another car on the road, just trying to reach their destination safely?

If we can trust any single person on the road not to just swerve into traffic and crash into everyone, can’t we trust any single person outside of a car to be a decent human being?

At the end of the day, when we all drive home and get out of our cars, we’re all just people doing the best with what we’ve got. People with dreams, families, weaknesses, and trials. People who aren’t just one thing, but many. Not just Muslim. But a daughter, friend, and nurse. Not just gay. But a son, employee, and animal rights activist. Not just white. But a wife, bookworm, and survivor.

When you drive, the people around you are just people.

When you're parked, the people around you are still just people.

We are ALL just people.

Don't You Think?

My chronic illness posts (one and two) weren't very popular, and that's okay. I honestly didn't expect them to be. But here's the crux of those posts; the reason that I felt like posting them was so important.

This is what I really want to ask everyone about all of my medical (physical and mental/emotional) issues:

Don't you think that I hate them too?

Don't you think that I would love to see all of the people and do all of the things all of the time?

Don't you think that I'd rather hang out with you (as planned) than attempt to sleep while feeling nauseous and keep getting up to sit on the toilet for ridiculous amounts of time with stomach cramps?

Don't you think that I'd rather spend time with all of the people that we drove two days to see instead of being shut up at my friend's apartment attempting to get some rest so that I might end up feeling well enough to be able to spend at least a teensy bit of time with them? We sure didn't just exhaust all of our funds and travel for a ridiculous amount of time so that I could be sick and make not only the traveling take way longer, but also make it so that we couldn't do nearly as much as we'd like to be able to once we got there.

Don't you think I'd actually like to be a productive human that gets up at a decent time and gets things done with time to spare to have fun?

Don't you think I'd rather be fit and healthy instead of getting light-headed and having labored breathing because I expended the energy to take a shower?

Don't you think that I feel awful for being late all of the time?

Don't you think that I wonder how I even have friends when I constantly have to cancel or push back plans because I feel too sick or too exhausted to follow through?

Don't you think that I'm sick of my life being a daily Russian roulette of whether or not I'll actually manage to do a single productive thing or not that day?

Don't you think that I hate constantly having to wonder how sick I'm going to feel tomorrow? Or how much my PTSD is going to ruin not only my day, but the day of everyone that depends on me?

Don't you think that I'd like to be able to live a normal life where I can set plans and not have to wonder if I'll actually manage to do them this time?

Don't you think that I'd like to not have to make bargains with God where I literally say that "I'll feel awful for every second of the day tomorrow if that means that I can feel well enough the next day to make it to and through all three hours of church on Sunday?"

Don't you think that I don't feel horrible each time I'm up late having a panic attack because I know that that means that I'm going to be too sick and tired to do anything the next day? Regardless of whether it's something that I WANT to do or not.

Don't you think that I hate every second of being in bed or sobbing all over my husband instead of going out and living my life?

Don't you think that I hate seeing my to-do list remain undone for days, weeks, months on end because I couldn't do any of them today because I felt too sick?

Don't you think that I hate that I try so hard every single day to be better and fail over and over again?

Don't you think that I'd love to be able to live my life like a regular, functional, healthy human being?

Because I do.

So please cut me some slack.

You don't know how hard it was for me to show up at all. You don't know how frustrated I got for being late or for having to bail out on plans because I physically can't handle them right now, no matter how excited I may have been for weeks to do them.

You don't know how dang hard I try every single moment of my life to be better. How often even doing the bare minimum is absolutely exhausting. How tired I am of "celebrating the small victories" when sometimes a win for me is getting out of bed, eating, and then brushing my teeth before getting back in bed for the rest of the day.

You don't know that I don't wait until I feel "good" to do things. I wait until it's barely tolerable and then I go and do it while still nauseous and exhausted. And I slap a smile on my face because I'm just happy to be out of the house, even if I still feel fairly horrid.

You don't feel the despair of wanting to be a good wife, student, friend, sister, daughter, employee, ward member, etc. and feeling like I'll never, ever be able to consistently be ANY of those things.

So before you say "surprise surprise, she's not coming", "she's going to be late", "she's being so inconsiderate/selfish" please ask yourself "Don't you think that she feels bad enough about the situation as it is?"

Because I can guarantee you that I do.

*Phew*

I typed all of the above up on my phone as we were driving back home from Rexburg. It was a really rough trip on me physically and emotionally for various reasons that I'm not going to get into right now. But my last night there spurred this post. It brought up fears that have been swirling around inside of me for as long as I can remember, and especially right now as I start a new life in Ohio.

You see, my whole life, I've worried about what other people think of me. I think most people do.

But for me, it hasn't just been whether people think that I'm pretty or not or talented enough or whatever (although I've had plenty of those worries too). No, my whole life, I've worried about what people would think of how my chronic illnesses effect my life.

In a previous post, I talked about how I always struggled to make and keep friends. I then went on to talk about some of the reasons that it was so hard for me. Though I didn't delve much into it in that post, I have always felt that most of it revolved around my mental and physical health. Making friends has always been a scary venture for me because I feel like, even now, there is always a small part of me that is waiting for myself to become too much for people. Waiting for them to realize that I'm too sad, too sick, too messed up to keep being friends with.

I remember talking to at least one companion on my mission about being terrified that no one would ever want to marry me because my medical stuff is just too much to handle.

And that is a fear that I've had my whole life.

Obviously I've found someone that decided to take on the challenge of dealing with my messy life. And I am so, SO incredibly, indescribably grateful for him. And yet, those fears of pushing people away, of being too much to handle, are still very much there.

Moving to Ohio has been extremely scary for me for a multitude of reasons. But the one that I've struggled with the most is my fear of rejection.

In Rexburg, I have been so blessed to have made so many wonderful, supportive friends. People who have been understanding of my many, many medical problems, both physical and mental. Leaving those people has been terrifying in all honesty. After spending my whole life in fear of rejection, in fear of losing every person that I ever care about, leaving the people who finally stuck around has been awful. Contemplating trying to find a group of people like that again has been very taxing.

I was very blessed to be able to make it through all of the craziness of this summer. Driving from Rexburg to Ohio, Ohio to New York, then to Pennsylvania, then back to OH, then back to PA, then back to OH, then getting married, then back to PA, then on to the honeymoon in NY, and then finally starting to settle in Ohio until we drove all the way to Rexburg and back.

My health got me through the wedding and first two receptions.

The honeymoon was rough because my body was spent from all of the traveling and stress. And then I got a cold halfway through. I still thoroughly enjoyed it simply because I got to spend a few days of interrupted time with my amazing new husband, but it was still clear that my body was done being nice to me.

The few weeks that we had between the honeymoon and our trip to Rexburg has been really hard on me, both physically and emotionally.

People keep asking me how married life is and I struggle to know what to say. Because Jonathan makes me happier than I've been capable of being in about two years. But I also am majorly struggling.

Our financial situation is awful. Jonathan has been having to work SO much just to keep us afloat. We don't have our own place yet. My physical health has dive-bombed again after being so miraculously nice to me over the summer. This means that while my husband works all day, I struggle to get out of bed for longer than an hour or two at a time. I have been feeling so incredibly useless. I want so badly to be able to help contribute to our marriage more; to be able to get a job and help make money. Or at least to be able to better support my husband in all that he does for me every day.

But I feel like I'm trying to keep my head above water in the ocean.

During a tsunami.

While wearing a denim dress.

Needless to say, feeling sick- and thus useless -all of the time has not been great for my mental health. I have had so many anxiety/panic attacks over the last few weeks. I am trying so hard to stay afloat; to "get better" so that I can be a contributing member of society. And in the midst of all of that, there is the fear of rejection from those around me. I don't really know anyone here yet, but I'm afraid to get to know people because I don't want them to see how broken I am. I don't want them to know that I am struggling so much and so deeply. I want people to see why Jonathan married me, but I don't even fully understand why he did.

Why would anyone want to deal with this- with me -all of the time for the rest of forever? Why would anyone want to be married to someone who is just a bump on a log most of the time? Unable to contribute financially or otherwise to supporting our family? Why would anyone be willing to put up with multiple panic attacks a week? And constant weakness and fatigue?

How am I supposed to prove to anyone else that Jonathan made a good choice in marrying me if I can't even see how it possibly could have been a good choice?

I am so afraid of letting the people here see how broken I am. How much I sleep because I'm nauseous and lightheaded, how much I sob uncontrollably, how much I often feel like the shell of a person instead of a functioning human being.

I want to make friends, but I don't want people to know who I really am. Because I'm afraid that if they do, they'll turn tail and book it away as fast as they can.

You would think that the positive experience that I've had with my Rexburg friends would help to calm those fears, but it doesn't. Instead I'm not only afraid of not being able to make meaningful, lasting connections here; I'm also afraid of losing the friendships that I have in Idaho. It's just this never ending cycle of fear, and sickness, and sadness.

With all of that being said, I do have a radiant beam of sunshine in my life that keeps me going each and every day:

My husband.

Jonathan is the one person that I am always certain loves me and wants me in his life. It doesn't matter if I don't understand why he does, if I feel that I don't deserve it, or that I'm struggling to love myself. No matter how I feel about myself at any given moment, I know without a doubt that Jonathan thinks that I'm amazing, beautiful, and worthwhile.

I had the worst panic attack yet last night. Sobbing uncontrollably on the floor, telling God that I don't know how to keep doing this, feeling like some loathsome creature that doesn't deserve the love that He, my husband, and my friends and family give to me. It was terrible, to say the very least. And yet, no matter how completely, horridly awful I felt about myself and my situation, I never once doubted that God loves me, knows what He's doing, and wouldn't put me through a single moment of pain that would not help me.

I also never once doubted that Jonathan actually does like being married to me for some reason. That he really does see so much good in me. And let me tell you, the way my brain has been beating on me, the fact that I never doubt my husband's love and devotion to me is one of the biggest miracles of my entire life.

After feeling rejected so much in my life- after feeling over and over again like I am letting everyone down, after being beaten down by my past fiance, who was supposed to be the one that never made me feel like I wasn't good enough -I know that I have one person that isn't going anywhere.

So when people ask me how married life is, it's hard to say. Because it is excruciating. Not because of my husband, but because of everything else. But it is also full of love and joy. Not because of everything else, but because of my husband.

I wish that I didn't feel like I constantly just want to take people by the shoulders and try to explain to them why I am the way that I am. I wish that I didn't live in constant fear of what others will think of me because of everything that I'm struggling with. I wish that I didn't always have thoughts of "Don't you think that I'm not already being hard enough on myself?" But I am also so blessed to know that even if no one else understands- even if no one else can fully comprehend the agony that I go through each day as I try to live a simple, functional life -one person does.

I don't ever have to ask Heavenly Father "Don't you think?" Because He knows. And because He knows, He's sent me the biggest blessing that I could ever receive; my husband.

And so no matter how defeated I feel, no matter how much all of this hurts sometimes, I know that I have to keep going. I can't just scream "Don't you think?!" to everyone and resign myself to a life of being misunderstood.

No matter how many panic attacks I have or how many days I struggle to even work up the energy and motivation to get up and brush my teeth before heading back to bed, I know that all of this is happening for a reason. I don't know why. I don't know when it's going to get easier. I don't know when I'll start consistently feeling "okay" again. But I know that I will.

Because even if no one else can fully understand what I'm going through, God does. And that's enough.

Don't you think?

PS- I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone that has stuck around. I know that I'm not always very easy to deal with. I know that being close to me means having to cut me a lot of slack, as well as having to pick up a lot of slack for me. I know that I can be very difficult to handle. So thank you for loving me anyway. Thank you for seeing the good in me even when all I can see is the bad. Thank you for wanting to be in my life even when sometimes all I want is to find a different one that's not so painful.

Thank you for trying to understand where I'm at. Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for forgiving me for the many, many times I've had to bail on you because of my health.

It honestly means the world to me.

I struggle to remember sometimes that there actually are a lot of people that think that I'm enough. It's hard to believe that when I don't feel like I'm enough. When I sometimes feel like I never will be.

So thank you.

Like This

Real talk.

I've been really struggling with my body lately. Clearly I'm not obese or anything, but I do weigh more right now than I ever have in my entire life. My thighs rub together when I walk, which has never happened to me before. My arms are wider and flabbier than usual. My face is rounder than it used to be. Because I'm small, I've been looking slightly pregnant a lot of the time because if my stomach grows at all, it's very apparent.

I've also been struggling with acne more in the last few months than I have in a while.

All in all, I haven't exactly looked my best. I've actually been looking the worst that I have in a long time, which is not what you want right before you get married. I wanted to look the prettiest that I've ever looked on my wedding day and the way my body was looking made it seem like that would be impossible.

My friend performed miracles on my generally unstylable hair and the pictures turned out pretty well. I can't really complain too much. But I've still been feeling extremely discontent with my body.

Starting my new life with my amazing husband should be this exciting adventure! But with my PTSD, everything is giving me major anxiety. Moving to a new state, not having friends, having to find a place for us to live, contemplating trying to find a job and actually successfully working it, etc. My anxiety has ben through the roof.

And my body image is just one more thing to add to the list of things that are giving me panic attacks at the moment.

So this picture hit REALLY hard.

There is so much about myself that I would like to change. Not just about my body, but about my mental being, about my capacity to function like a regular adult, about my ability to be a good wife in the midst of it all. I'm being stretched closer to breaking right now.

But I do have one amazing thing going for me. My husband. He's on my side, by my side, cheering me on, comforting me, and reminding me that even if I don't, HE loves me just the way that I am right now. He's the whisper in my ear that tells me that I'm better than I think that I am. That I'm beautiful. That I'm strong. That I can do hard things and that things really will turn out okay.

And so now I sit here writing this, trying with all my might to believe him.

Because even when I can't, he "just love[s] me like this".

Chronic Illness Part Two: Healing is Hard When Your Body Hates Everything About You

Okay, so this post should wrap up the whole reason that I'm writing these. But to start, I need to finish my list of problems. Yay!

Irritable Bowel Syndrome

This is the big one. 

Simply put, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (or IBS) is the diagnosis that they give you when there is literally nothing else that you could possibly have. If all of the millions of tests that they try on you come back negative, you have IBS. If no medicine or treatment helps, you have IBS. It's great.

When I was 8 years old, I started to feel sick every day. It started out with nausea. I never, ever threw up, but I felt nauseous constantly. Over the years, more symptoms appeared. Light-headedness, head aches, chest pain, weakness, etc. And every time a new symptom appeared or an old symptom felt different than before, we would always go back to the doctor because I must actually be sick right now, right? Wrong. It had just morphed. So sometimes the nausea felt different than other times. And sometimes the headaches or chest pain were different. And sometimes I would get awful stomachaches along with the nausea. And sometimes I was constipated, but other times it was diarrhea. Or it was somehow both. Cool, cool.

From the time that I was a little girl, I would spend A LOT of time on the toilet every day. As a kid, I would just sit there and play school by myself. As I got older, I would get really bored. This is still an issue. I am often late to things because I had to go to the bathroom and ended up on the toilet for 30 minutes constipated/having diarrhea. I remember my mom being confused as to why I never seemed to know whether I had to go number 2 or not when I was younger. But that's because I usually didn't feel like I had to until I was on the toilet. The same often applies today. But I also have to run to the bathroom sometimes because it hits all of a sudden. Which is great when it hits right in the middle of work.

IBS also meant that I missed A LOT of school growing up. I would wake up super nauseous and weak, so the thought of trying to walk around school with a bunch of books and sit through classes while trying not to pass out made staying home seem like a much better option. My mom and I actually had to go to court after my first year in Pennsylvania because the school system didn't care that I got good grades despite missing so much school, all they care about was my attendance record. They didn't care that I had a note from my mom- and often from doctors -to excuse every single absence. They decided that my mom- who was doing all that she could to figure out why her daughter was sick all the time -was being a neglectful parent.

Fun fact: I started my first ever period sitting in a court room.

As soon as the judge looked at my medical record and saw that we really had been seeing doctors and doing tests and everything, she decided that the whole case was stupid because obviously my mom was being a stellar parent by trying to figure out WHY I was sick all the time instead of just ignoring it. The case was almost immediately dismissed. 

Speaking of seeing doctors and doing tests.... From the time I was 8 until I was 18, I saw ALL of the doctors. I went to gastroenterology, rheumatology, and psychiatry departments. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, anxiety, an aneurysm, and a million other things that I don't remember, only for them to decide- after the medications for those things didn't help -that that wasn't it after all. I've done ALL of the digestive tests; colonoscopies, endoscopes, capsule endoscopes, barium studies, one where I had to eat radioactive eggs, one where I had to drink two giant cups of who knows what. Most of them required either fasting for X amount of time and/or a colon cleanse. I've also had CAT scans and MRIs. I've peed in so many cups, had blood drawn SO many times, had IVs, drunk weird things, etc. And everything always came back negative. 

And the doctors would tell me that like it was a good thing. "Everything looks great!" Great. Really great. I'm glad that I still look like a crazy person for feeling super sick all the time even though all tests show that I'm in tip-top condition! I'm SO glad that I still don't have a diagnosis, which means we still have no course of action to make me feel better so that I can live a normal life. Thanks so much for that Doc!

It's not their fault. But I can honestly tell you (and this is really embarrassing to admit) that I got the point where I wouldn't have even cared if they told me that I had cancer because at least then we could TRY to make me better. At least there would be a name for what I have and a treatment plan. Yeah it might not work and I'd die, but at least I would know. I know how awful that sounds, but that's what having an unknown medical problem does to you. 

I can't tell you how many times doctor's have thought that I had appendicitis only to come back to "Everything looks great!"

When I was 16 or 17, I started bleeding when I pooped. It had no correlation with when I felt nauseous or got stomachaches. It just started happening one day and then would happen every so often. Taking stool samples is disgusting. 

The blood is what kept me from going on a mission right away. 

I knew that there was no way that they would let me serve a mission with an unknown internal bleeding problem. I mean, that's one of the questions that they always ask you in the ER; "Have you had bloody stool?" Yes indeedy, three times this week! But I feel totally fine otherwise, thanks for asking!

Sorry, as you can tell, the sarcasm is strong in this post.

After even MORE digestive tests, we finally figured out that my intestines were bleeding because of my constipation. I remember prepping for this test actually. The last one that I did before my mission. I had to drink two huge cups of who knows what and have an IV stuck in my arm. The nurses were shocked when I slurped down cup #1 super fast and decided to go ahead and put the IV in while I chugged the second one. At this point, drinking mysterious liquids and having needles stuck into my body wasn't really anything new. I just wanted to get it over with. And this one finally got results!

We still didn't know why I was constipated all the time, but we knew that that's why I was bleeding, so I was finally able to turn in my mission papers after about 8 months of doing medical tests even though I had pretty much already done all of them in middle and high school. 

And by then I had started to feel better more often, so I thought that I was finally getting somewhere with this mysterious illness. 

HA.

I was in the MTC for 12 days and went to the ER twice in that time. I spent most of my mission sick in bed and was almost sent home a couple of times. Being sick all the time did nothing to help the severe depression that was going on while I was a missionary. It was actually on my mission that I was diagnosed with IBS. The doctor told me that basically if everything comes back negative but you're still crazy sick all the time, then you probably have IBS. He told me that it's triggered by stress. But listen, it doesn't matter if you're handling your life just fine mentally/emotionally or not, your body will still react poorly. So even regular, totally manageable stress can and will make me super nauseous. Even if I don't feel stressed out at all, my body will still get nauseous. But if I DO feel stressed, then everything goes to pot.

IBS also makes it really hard to figure out if I have an actual virus/flu at times because the symptoms of IBS are also the symptoms of many illnesses. So every I seem to be extra sick I get to play the "is it worth it to go to the doctor" game. Because why spend money to see a doctor when you feel like crap but know that he/she'll probably just conclude that your IBS is acting up? But then, what happens if I do get seriously ill and I don't see a doctor because I figure it's just a flare up?

Anyway, we're getting close to the point of all of this, but really quick, let me go over PTSD with you again.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

My current counselor told me that what I went through with my ex's abuse and felony actually gave me a brain injury. So when they say "trauma" they mean that what happened actually hurt my brain.

Symptoms of PTSD include- but are not limited to:

Nightmares, panic attacks, being triggered and having flashbacks, trouble concentrating, being extra jumpy, issues sleeping, feeling keyed up, loss of appetite, headaches, experiencing sensory overload, anxiety, twitchiness when you try to fall asleep, puking, and chronic fatigue.

I only listed ones that I have personally experienced, but there are more here and here that go more in depth as well.

As you can imagine, having PTSD on top of chronic sleep issues and chronic digestive issues is no walk in the park.

And this is the crux of this whole Chronic Illness post:

It's taking me longer to heal because of my chronic illnesses than it would if I didn't have them.

Let's look at some of the things that would help me to heal mentally and emotionally:

Exercise, proper diet, good sleep, counseling, and keeping busy/feeling productive.

All of those things are excruciatingly difficult to do when you're not only dealing with PTSD (and the anxiety and depression that's wrapped up in that), but you're also extra nauseous and extra light-headed. 

I lost my job within about two and a half months of my ex being arrested. Not because I wasn't doing my job well still even though I was majorly depressed. No, not that. I lost my job because I had to call off too much. Because I would wake up feeling so weak and nauseous that I could hardly get out of bed. Because I would try to get ready for work and almost pass out because I would get so dizzy. And so I would call off. 

And my boss tried really, really hard to work with me. He knew the situation and knew that I was going through some really intense crap and so he was more lenient with absences than he normally would be. But when it came down to it, I didn't make it to work enough to viably stay on. I wasn't fired per se, but I didn't really quit either. We kind of just mutually agreed that I didn't work there anymore. He put me down as re-hireable and said that he hoped to see me back in a few months.

I didn't work for almost a year.

And school? Man oh man, I hate when people ask me how long I have left. *Shrugs* "I might graduate......... Someday...."

Because the PTSD makes it really hard for me to focus, making getting homework done SUPER difficult. And the IBS makes it really hard for me to get to class as much as I need to. And so ever since my ex started abusing me in Fall of 2016 (before he was arrested, mind you), I've had to drop at least one class per semester and have failed some of the others. And you have to understand that I had never failed a class in my life before then. Even with missing school constantly growing up, I always made up all of the work and ended the year with all A's and B's (except for the one C that I got my entire grade school career).

I've only been able to take a few credits at a time, and even then I have yet to have a semester where I actually kept up with the classes. Not for lack of trying. Not for lack of desire to learn. On the contrary, I've had to drop some of my favorite classes. And I've failed classes that I'm fascinated by. I WANT to be in class learning. I don't really want to do homework, but I sure as heck want to succeed in college, so in a way, I do! This past Fall semester, I sat in front of my laptop trying to focus on an English assignment for a good TWO HOURS before finally giving myself a break because I clearly wasn't getting anywhere.

I want to be able to take full classes again. I want to graduate someday. But for the last two years, that has been a real struggle.

I finally have a job again, but I'm still having to call off CONSTANTLY. I've maybe made it to work every day in a week about four times since I started in April. Four. If that.

And this semester, I've been feeling sick even more often than the last couple of semesters, which means that I've also been missing more church. And I LOVE church. And I've been missing Tuesday devotional. And I LOVE devo. 

Which are two more things that would really help me to heal mentally/emotionally. I'm trying so hard to lean on the Savior through my difficulties, but I feel like I'm not doing very well because I struggle to focus when I study the scriptures each day, and I'm lucky if I make it past sacrament meeting on Sunday. I've been to Relief Society maybe three times this semester. If that.

Feeling sick constantly makes it really hard to progress in this whole healing process thing. Because there are things that I want to do and that I try to do that I know would help me, but I physically am incapable of doing them. And because I feel sick so often, when I get a day that I don't feel sick, I end up doing way too much and exhausting myself, making it a lot more likely for me to feel super sick the next day. 

And everyone keeps telling me to "Take care of yourself. Don't push yourself so hard. Be nice to yourself." and I'm so sick of it because taking care of myself means missing out on everything important. It means missing work and missing church and missing class. It means not doing fun things with roommates and friends a lot of the time because I'm in bed. But then if I do push myself, I end up feeling way worse. So where is the line between pushing myself so that I make some kind of progress, and being nice to myself so that I don't go backwards? I'm still trying to find it and I don't seem to be getting any closer.

I know that I've talked about this before and I'm sure I'll talk about it again, but I still really struggle not to compare myself to who I was when my ex fell in love with me.

That Anna was taking 13 credits, working 20 hours a week, working at the temple every Saturday, volunteering with the Disciple Leadership Council every Wednesday night, and doing it all on four hours of sleep a night because she was also doing long distance. Then that Anna was in a bike accident and added physical therapy to the mix. And she still did everything else. And she ended the semester with straight A's. She did have to drop ballet because of her injuries, but she did everything else. With no sleep. In extreme pain.

And now I can't even take six credits and work. I still work at the temple and haven't had to call off too, too much, but it's also the only thing I ever have planned on Saturday because I know that I can't handle anything else. 

My life has become a daily game of pick and choose. If I go to work, then I feel too awful to go to class. If I go to class, then I fell too awful to go to work. If I stay for all three church meetings, then I won't make it to my evening meetings. And most of the time, I actually don't end up making it to any of the above because I feel too awful to do any of it.

And not only am I comparing myself to who I used to be and what I used to be able to do, but I find myself comparing myself to other victims as well. I have a few different friends that have been victims of severe abuse, whose husbands have been adulterous or severely demeaning, and while I know that they have their own struggles, I watch them succeeding in school. I see them working and socializing and being functional. And most of them started recovery quite a while after me. And yet they seem to be so much further along than I am.

And so I'm left feeling thoroughly useless. 

Two years later and I still can't succeed in school, work, or life in general. Two years later and I've still made such little progress. And that kills me. It kills me to see my friends (who in a lot of ways have been through much worse things than me) moving forward in life while I seem to be stuck. Not because I'm not SO happy for them, but because it has made me feel even more inferior, even more pathetic. Why is it so hard for me to move forward when they seem to be making huge strides?

And something that I have had to come to terms with recently is that 1- they are struggling more than I am seeing and 2- they aren't fighting their physical health along with their mental health to the extent that I am. And that honestly makes a huge difference. Because they aren't dealing with severe nausea and light-headedness, major back pain, and asthma, it's a little bit easier for them to take the necessary steps to recover. Not to say that they aren't also incredibly strong and working through a lot, but it is important for me to realize that we are dealing with very different things. And so my healing process may actually be a lot slower than their's. Not because I'm weaker than them, but because I've got an extra layer of difficulty due to me illnesses.

Not that there aren't really good things going on in my life. I am so freaking extremely blessed that Jonathan somehow fell in love with me in the midst of all of this. My ex fell in love with me when I was at my very best. Jonathan fell in love with me when I was at my worst.

I am so incredibly grateful to have such a loving and patient fiance. I am so grateful that he wants to marry me with full knowledge of my lack of functionality. But honestly, it also kills me. Because he is the literal best person for me. But I feel so awful that he is picking up so much baggage. That he is going to have to do so, so much for me. 

Granted, I also do a lot better with everything when we're together, so I honestly think that the healing process will progress a lot better once we're on the same side of the country again. 

But for right now, with him being in Ohio while I'm in Idaho, it's been really rough. 

And you have to understand; I already felt like no one would ever want to marry me because of all of my medical problems. And that was when they were under better control. But now that I've added PTSD into the mix- which has exacerbated all of the problems that I already had -I thought that there was no way that anyone would want to be with me. Who would want to be with someone that can't hold a job? Or who struggles to do well in a single class? Who would want to be with someone that is sick in bed half the time and sobbing and having anxiety attacks the other half?

Apparently Jonathan. Bless his heart.

And I could go on and on about all of the good things that he sees in me and why he wants to marry me, but that's not the point of this post. 

The point is that chronic illness is the worst. And it really does do a number on a person. It makes life really hard even without adding trauma (AKA- brain injury) into the mix. Because being chronically ill already makes me feel useless on it's own, but PTSD has also given me fairly severe anxiety that I never had to deal with before on top of everything else. So every concern is blown way out of proportion. Even if I know in my head that something isn't a big deal, my body and emotions still run away with me and leave me sobbing uncontrollably, hardly able to breathe. It doesn't matter that I'm doing what I can, it never, ever feels like it's going to be enough.

So if you have a (or multiple) chronic illness(es), please know that you really are trying your best. Even if your best literally feels like nothing at all. And know that there are people who will recognize that you really are trying your best. There are people out there who will see that where you currently are isn't because of a lack of effort or desire. That sometimes you literally just can't do the thing at the moment. And that doesn't make not being able to do it feel any better necessarily, but it's at least nice to know that there's someone that doesn't just think that you're being lazy or pathetic.

Because being chronically ill isn't lazy or pathetic. It's being sick. Hopelessly, constantly sick. And that's seriously rough.

And if you know someone that has a chronic illness, please know that they are probably trying a lot harder than you think they are. Having a sickness with no cure is really taxing. It's exhausting, it's discouraging, and it messes with EVERYTHING. Try imagining going through every day of your life with a giant tumor that no one else can see. It still hurts and it still messes you up, but no one else can see it. That's chronic illness.

I wish that I could tell you all that I knew that everything was going to get better soon, but I can't. Because with chronic illness, you never really know. But I DO know that being sick doesn't make me a bad person. I know that it doesn't mean that I'm just not trying hard enough or that I'm lazy. Being sick doesn't mean that I deserve love any less than anyone else. It just means that things are harder for me right now than they should be. It means that healing is going to take longer for me than it might for others. Because PTSD irritates my IBS and IBS makes me sick which makes me more stressed which irritates my IBS and on and on and on. 

Being chronically mentally ill at the same time as being chronically physically ill just really sucks. A lot. But I know that I'm going through all of this for a reason. 

I saw this on Elizabeth Smart's Instagram recently and it really spoke to me: 

I ran into the teacher of the class that I had to drop this semester and we were talking about my situation. She told me that she thinks that healing is being so difficult for me and taking so long for me because I'm going to be able to use my experiences to help other people, so I have to go through extra pain so that I can understand and sympathize with others even more. And going through extra pain isn't my favorite thing that's happened in my life, but I hope that it does mean that I will be able to be more understanding of others in all different situations because I've been through all of them. Simultaneously. For a long time.

When I was younger, I would sometimes pray that since I was sick all the time, other people wouldn't have to be. And that I would take some extra trials if it meant that others didn't have to suffer so much. I don't know why I thought that that was a good idea, but those prayers are being answered. And I hope that because of the suffering that I am going through now, I will be able to help prevent others from going through similar things. 

Like Elizabeth Smart said; I would would never want to go through all that I've gone through again. But I am grateful for all that it's taught me. I'm grateful that I've been able to help people through sharing my story. And if I have to suffer so that I can help others, then I guess that makes all of this worth it. 

Does that mean that I won't still hate every second of trying to recover? No. Does it mean that I won't still get frustrated at myself and feel pathetic and broken? No. But it absolutely means that I'm going to keep doing my best to reach out to others so that they can have the help and support that they need. And so that they know that they're not alone in feeling sick, and anxious, and broken. 

Healing is hard. Healing when your body is doing all that it can to prevent you from healing is harder. But living with no hope is hardest. I know that things will be okay. Not necessarily that they'll be a ton better anytime soon, but that things will work out the way that they need to as long as I keep trying and as long as I keep trusting that God knows what He's doing with me. Those things may not have gotten me to full recovery yet, but they did bring me the greatest blessing in my life (Jonathan), so I can already see that persevering is going to be worth it.

Hang in there. I know that chronic illness makes everything really, really hard. Like you're living your life on difficult mode while everyone else is on medium. But the harder things are, the stronger you'll become. I promise.

Chronic Illness Part One: Being Sick Sucks

This post goes out to everyone with a chronic illness. If that applies to you, you're awesome and I am so sorry.

I've kind of skirted around this topic for some reason, but I decided that I needed to not do that anymore because this is another one of those kind of taboo subjects. It's something that SO many people struggle with, and yet no one talks about it. And so no one really understands what it's like.

Which I think is part of the reason that I've been afraid to talk about it. Because I don't want to talk about all of these health problems and the take away be "Wow. That girl's got even more issues than I thought." Even if that's true. But people have been really understanding about my life being a mess because of a felony. I can only hope that they'll be understanding of my life being a mess because of invisible illnesses that have plagued me my whole life.

Anyway, here goes nothing!

Ever since I was a little girl, I've struggled with feeling sick ALL. THE. TIME. And I'll tell you what. It really, really sucks.

It sucks because feeling sick sucks. It sucks because you question every bodily function, unsure if you're body is supposed to do that, or if it's another thing that's abnormal about your body. It sucks because people think that you're faking. It sucks because you feel like you should just be used to it by now and be able to push through it. It sucks because there is SO much that you want to do but can't if you feel like death. It just sucks.

I have multiple chronic illnesses. One that I've had for as long as I can remember (insomnia), and some that developed more around 2nd grade (Irritable Bowel Syndrome, depression), some that I developed in high school (asthma, hypersomnia), and then some that I have more recently acquired (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which means that semi-severe anxiety has been added to the mix). Oh, and I also have a back injury that seems like it will never go away. And then there's things that I'm still not really sure about that are wrong with my body.

Okay, let's break these down, shall we?

Insomnia/Hypersomnia

For as long as I can remember, it's taken me longer to fall asleep than anyone else. I started having sleepovers when I was about five or six, and I noticed that my friends would fall asleep in a matter of minutes, leaving me to lay there in the dark for another few hours. I didn't think that there was anything wrong with me, just that some people fall asleep faster than others and I happened to be the only person that I knew that took all night to fall asleep.

I was kind of sneaky about it too. I would always tell me friends to "feel free to wake me up if you wake up first!" because I knew that they would then tell me the same thing and I knew that I would always be awake first.

When I wasn't at a sleepover, I spent most of my hours in bed reading. My dad would come in and the lights would still be on and he would ask "do you know what time it is?!" and I would honestly tell him no. Then he would tell me to turn my lights out and go to sleep. But I knew that I wasn't going to be able to just fall asleep, so I usually just kept reading until all of the words started blurring together and I knew that I could actually fall asleep finally.

Not trying to sound like a disobedient little toerag, but I had to do what I had to do. Anyone that knows me knows that I HATE being bored. And there are few things more boring than laying in bed- in the dark -for hours on end trying to fall asleep. So I would read instead.

When I was a kid, my body still somehow functioned on very little sleep. As I got older though, this became a much bigger problem. So- sometime in middle school I think -I was prescribed sleep medication that I have taken every night since. With the medicine, I could (generally) fall asleep and stay asleep better, but for some reason I was still crazy exhausted the next day anyway.

It didn't matter how many hours of sleep I got, how early I went to bed, etc. I still would be dead tired all day every day. And so I did a second sleep study (I did the first somewhere in the process of getting me onto sleep meds and such) and was diagnosed with another sleep disorder called Hypersomnia.

Insomnia is when you can't fall asleep and/or stay asleep at night. Hypersomnia is essentially when you can't stay awake during the day.

Which, obviously if I'm not sleeping at night, I'll be tired the next day. Duh. But... I was usually sleeping through the night at this point. But I couldn't stay awake for the life of me even so.

(It's not narcolepsy; I wouldn't fall asleep all of a sudden while I was walking or anything. But sit me down in any situation for very long and I struggled. A lot.)

I tried EVERYTHING to stay awake during school. I tried pinching myself, putting my leg on the cold metal part of the desk, sucking on mints, etc. I remember my Psych teacher telling me one day that he's never seen someone try so hard to stay awake in his class. He told me that usually when he saw people falling asleep, they clearly were just giving in to it. They'd lay their head on the desk and just pass out. But he watched me bob up and down for probably most of the 45 minute long class, trying desperately to get something out of the lecture.

I also remember one particular day when I started to fall asleep while taking my AP English test (you know, the one that you PAY to take?) and I was like "Uh-uh. Not now. I can't." And so I started rubbing this horrid sunburn that I had on my shoulder in the hopes that it would wake me up. No dice. So then I was panicking about falling asleep, falling asleep, AND in a crap ton of pain. Yay...

The doctor tried putting me on a stimulant to help me stay awake during the day, but it had a really horrible effect on me and made me super groggy and out of it. So I had to stop taking that pretty quickly and we just never figured anything else out.

The hypersomnia isn't quite as bad now as it used to be, but it still really gets to me sometimes. It really sucked on my mission because I almost never made it through personal study, no matter how hard I tried. I would even try studying standing up, but I'd still be so sleepy that the result was me feeling super lightheaded and nauseous. Good times.

Asthma

I've never had the greatest lung capacity in the world, but things got really bad my junior year of high school.

I got really sick about halfway through the school year. It started out as a cold, became really severe bronchitis, and then just didn't go away. I developed what we call "The Cough." Imagine coughing so hard that you literally feel like you're going to cough up not only your lungs, but every organ in your body. A cough that wracks your entire body. That tears up the back of your throat, gives you a massive headache, and makes your whole body sore. Now multiply what you pictured by about 46. THAT is The Cough.

I missed almost three months of school straight. I went to the ER multiple times when I coughed so hard, so frequently, that I could hardly breathe. They put me on literally dozens of medications including multiple inhalers, steroids, and multiple rounds of antibiotics. Nothing was working. I got breathing treatments and went to see an allergy doctor. We found out then that I was allergic to dust mites (AKA, everything) and got me on some allergy meds that made me stop being itchy all the time (which was a whole different problem), but didn't stop The Cough.

After a while, I tried to go to school. I would usually make it until about AP Music Theory. At which point my teacher would make me go home. So picture this: the music room is in the same hallway as the nurse's office. So I would walk down the hall to call my mom, then I would walk to the complete other side of the building and up the stairs to my locker, and then back down to the nurse's office to wait for my mom to pick me up. So I essentially passed EVERY SINGLE CLASSROOM. Teachers would literally stop their classes so that they could poke their heads out of the their doors and ask if I was alright because they had heard me hacking in the hallway. I'm pretty sure that the whole school became accustomed to my Cough.

Finally they put me on steroids AND and antibiotic at the same time and it eventually went away. But not before I missed every Midterm, science fair, and all of the research days for a 10 page AP Lang research paper. That was fun to make up. I had no idea what was happening in any of my classes at that point and certainly didn't remember what we had learned before. So making up the midterms was torture, I turned my science fair project in literally the last week of school, and I just about killed myself writing my paper that ended up being 18 pages long because it was about Harry Potter. Oh, and I did the musical. Don't ask me how.

Ever since that year though, I have "asthma". I put asthma in quotations because it's not typical. My rescue inhaler doesn't actually help after I've started to have an asthma attack because I don't have normal asthma attacks. I don't stop breathing or anything. I get The Cough. And once it starts, it's not going to stop anytime soon. So I basically just have to lay down for the rest of the day, knowing that I'm going to be sore and exhausted the next day. I swear I should have a six-pack by now from coughing.

Colds almost immediately turn into bronchitis for me, so winter is kind of the worst a lot of the time. I have to be really careful about exercising because if I push myself too hard I'll have an asthma attack. It's great.

So there's that.

Depression

So I said that the depression started when I was 8, but thinking back, I'm realizing that that's not really true. I definitely was always an emotional kid. I was very sensitive to others' pain. I would cry about everything and had really low self-esteem. This wasn't helped at all by moving to a state where I never, ever felt like I fit in when I was 12. It was from the ages of probably 11-16 that the depression really started to set in. In particular, I remember that the year that I turned 16 was really rough. I was super emotional all the time. I would end up alone in a side room crying during most stake dances. I felt like nobody cared about me and it made sense that they wouldn't because there was nothing special about me. It was rough.

I also remember getting super freaked out by my brother being deployed. He'd been deployed before and it hadn't really bothered me before, but this time I was just a total wreck. Constantly.

My mission was super rough for me because I didn't just get discouraged, I became completely distraught. I was so thoroughly down on myself and nothing that anyone did or said helped. I ended up having to talk to a counselor while I was a missionary because it got so bad.

Side note- Can I just say that counselors can be SO wonderful? There's something extremely validating about having a trained professional tell you that you've been through more in 20 years than many of her older patients had been through in their lives. It made me realize that maybe I wasn't as pathetic as I thought after all. Finding the right counselor is vital, but once you do, they really are amazing.

Anyway, that's all I'm really going to say about depression for now because I'll address more of that when I talk about PTSD and such.

Part Two of this post will address IBS and PTSD, so I'll talk a little bit about some of the other things really quick.

Back Injury

So I was in a bicycle accident a little over two years ago. I sprained my wrist, bruised- and possibly fractured -my ribs, bruised a few bones, and got whiplash. The wrist hurt the worst first. Then the ribs. And then my neck. And yet it's the whiplash that's still affecting me.

The pain spread from the left side of my neck down into my shoulder and back on that side, and eventually to the rest of my back and neck.

I went to the doctor, an osteopath (a chiropractor that's actually also a legit doctor as well), and physical therapy. I did PT for a few months. I went and got massages at the massage school here in Rexburg. I did exercises and fixed my posture (mostly). But my back would get better for a little bit, and then tank again. And if I try to do anything the least bit strenuous, my back hates me for weeks. I climbed The Tower at the ropes course here at school for one of my classes. It was so fun! My back didn't bother me at all! Until the next day. And then for the next two weeks. I haven't climbed since.

I work at a thrift store right now in the Small As Is/Large As Is department. This means that I'm constantly bending and lifting. My back has been angry at my for the last few months because of it. My asthma also gets angry at me because of all of the dust, and I have to wear gloves so that I don't break out because of my dust mite allergy. It's great.

The point is, my back has made it really difficult to do a lot of things. I love climbing. Trees, rock walls, you name it. But I'm so afraid of the pain that I know will follow if I do it that I just... don't anymore. A lot of exercise is hard not only because of my asthma, but now also because of my back.

So there's that.

Misc

Some other things that I still have no clue about:

My arms have always been really sensitive. My brothers would hardly touch me play punching me and it would hurt SO bad. They're still like that.

I have "weak ankles" like Megara says in Hercules. Or Kronk.

My right ankle started hurting really badly one day and didn't stop. We went to the doctor who said that I had probably sprained it. I wore an ankle brace for a while. It kind of helped. Except that I still get severe ankle pain sometimes. Not only in my right ankle, but in my left ankle as well. Sometimes one bothers me, sometimes the other, and sometimes both. I have a couple of ankle bandages that I wear occasionally when it's really bad. Not because anything is "wrong", but because my ankle just hurts.

Granted, I also have a cyst on one of my ankles, which doesn't help. It hurts to kneel on it.

Speaking of cysts. I also had one on the side of my head for years and years. I finally got it removed right before my mission. Only to have another one appear on the back of my head a few months into my mission. It's already at least the same size as the old one ended up. It doesn't really hurt most of the time, so I just ignore it. But what the?

Other than that, sometimes my legs will be really sore for seemingly no reason. Basically I just get a lot of random pain that doesn't really have an explanation. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia at one point, but then it was decided that that's not what I have after all. That's happened to me a lot. I've been diagnosed with so many different things, only to have it retracted later when the treatments for those things did nothing. So that's cool.


Anyway, this all seems kind of pointless at the moment, but I promise that this is really going somewhere. I'm not just listing off all of the ways that my body hates me just for funsies.

I hope that you are starting to see, though, how much chronic illness/pain really does interfere with everyday life. Because I think that that is what people really don't get. They don't get how a sickness that you can't see or treat can really screw up a person's life. They don't get that functioning as a normal human being is sometimes just really hard for those of us with chronic illnesses. People think that we're being weak and whiny, or else that we're faking and just trying to get out of things. But I know that for me at least, I have a huge desire to live a normal life. I WANT to be able to have a regular schedule, go on adventures, work hard, exercise, etc. But I can't always do those things because of my body. It's not that going to work or doing homework are my favorite things in the world, but feeling like I'm a competent human being that can work hard and progress in life is.

I'll delve more into all of that in Part Two, so hang in there and I'll get Part Two soon!

(To be continued...)

This Weekend

This has been a really big weekend for a few different reasons. June 15th was both the one year anniversary of my blog and the three month anniversary of Jonathan and I dating. And then today (as I start writing this at least) is Father's Day. I originally started writing a post just about the 15th, but I haven't really had time to write until now and I decided that I wanted to say a couple of things about Father's Day while I'm at it since it's today.

The anniversaries that were on June 15th both mark days that have changed my life forever and I really felt that today.

Before I started blogging, I was already pretty open about my ex being arrested and how it's affected me. But by following the prompting to start a blog, I invited Heavenly Father to inspire me over and over again with different posts that progressively delved deeper and deeper into everything that happened. Not just from the time of the arrest on, but all of the abuse that happened before the arrest. Starting a blog was the beginning of me doing my best to speak out about things that society skirts around that we really shouldn't. Starting it helped me to decide to change my major so that I could dedicate my studies to learning how to better help people that have suffered from abuse and addiction.

I've mentioned this before, but I've come to realize this past year or so that I learn the most by talking (or writing). I really struggle to sit and ponder about things and try to figure out how I feel. But I'll say things while talking to someone that either I really needed to hear or else I didn't realize that I felt that way about. I had a moment like that while talking to Jonathan where I realized- as I was saying it -that I wanted to be with him.

With all of that being said, blogging has been the best way for me to process everything that has happened and discover how much I've learned, how far I've come, and how far I still have to go.

That's all I'll say about my blogiversary for now.

Let's talk about Jonathan.

We gave you all a basic rundown of how we met, started dating, and decided to get married. So let me expand on all of that a bit more.

I know that our story sounds insane. We'd only been dating for about four weeks when we knew that getting married this summer was right, and for only one more week than that when we got engaged. There is still so much that we don't know about each other and we've been long-distance ever since the proposal and will be until pretty soon before the wedding. I was seriously hurt (to put it lightly) by a porn addict, and all of a sudden I'm engaged to another one that I've known for less than a year. I get that all of that sounds not only crazy, but down right stupid.

I get that because it's crazy to me and I would think that it's idiotic if I didn't know for sure that it's right.

In a previous post, I shared parts of a conversation that I had with Jonathan when we were just friends where I realized that I wasn't afraid to be close to porn addicts. I mean, I knew that to an extent because I had stayed close to people that I was already close to before the arrest that are addicts. But I realized that I was willing to let new people into my life that struggled with pornography as well.

What's interesting too is that earlier that semester, I had had a conversation with a good friend of mine where we ended up talking about whether or not I would ever be willing to consider marrying someone who struggled with pornography again. My friend said something to the effect of "I don't think that Heavenly Father would do that to you. I don't think that He would have you end up with a porn addict after everything that you've been through."

When she said that I kind of got this "Hold up" feeling and told her that I didn't think that that was something that I was going to be "protected" from. Not because Heavenly Father is sitting up there "muahahahaing" as He finds another addict to "inflict" me with, but because addicts are people. And just because I was severely hurt by one addict didn't mean that all repentant, fighting addicts had no chance to not only be with me, but make me extremely happy. Heavenly Father can't protect me from everyone that sins or struggles because there is not a single person out there that doesn't sin and struggle.

Anyway, then all of a sudden I had the thought that marrying a recovering addict could end up being a huge blessing for so many people. Because me getting up and speaking about my experiences is great. But me getting up and sharing my experiences of being abused by a porn addict and then having my husband get up and share his experiences with being a porn addict would be so much more powerful. Because then you get both sides of the story to an extent.

Obviously Jonathan is not my ex, so he can't exactly tell his side of the story, but he can talk about the difficulties of fighting addiction from experience. And together we can show people the very real happiness that is still available for both those who have been abused, and those who struggle with addiction.

My ex is the perfect example of what can happen if you lie about your addiction and don't get the proper help. My fiance is the perfect example of what can happen if you are honest and seek out help.

Anyway, that picture in my head of standing up with some faceless future husband and (hopefully) changing lives stuck with me. Not that that's the reason that I'm marrying Jonathan, but that conversation helped me to be open to dating him when the time came. Because it was finally solidified for me that I actually WAS willing to give another addict a chance. As long as he was truly fighting.

And let me tell you, my experience dating Jonathan is so completely opposite to my experience with my ex. My ex hid and lied about everything. He abused me in so many different ways and made me feel like anything bad that happened was my fault and that I deserved to be treated poorly.

My fiance is open and honest with me about his addiction. He treats me with an immense amount of love and respect that I no longer feel that I deserve because I'm still struggling to break out of the abuse mindset.

When I have an anxiety attack and am crying everywhere, I feel like I would totally deserve it for Jonathan to get upset at me and feel like I'm a huge burden and mess that he doesn't want to deal with right now. But he never, ever makes me feel that way. Not only that, but he literally believes that every time that I am struggling is simply an opportunity for him to love me more.

For example, I had a great day today! Until tonight. For reasons that I'm not going to get into right now, by the time Jonathan and I Skyped tonight, I was REALLY struggling emotionally.

All day I had been so excited to Skype him (as usual, but especially since today is Father's Day). I was going to try to look especially cute for him and was excited to talk to him about all of the reasons that I'm excited for him to be a dad.

What he got instead was me having the beginnings of a panic attack and sobbing uncontrollably.

I felt so bad that that was what he was getting for Father's Day; a miserable, hysterical fiance. Happy Father's Day to you Jonathan!

I felt that he would be totally justified in being disappointed that that was what he got. That it would make total sense for him to be frustrated at me for not being able to contain my emotions for two seconds so that he could end his Father's Day on a good note.

But he wasn't.

He was grateful to have the opportunity to love me more.

Is he even a real person? Is this real life? Who actually thinks and feels that way?

Jonathan. That's who.

And that's why I'm marrying him. Because there has never been a moment where Jonathan has made me feel the way that my ex did. But more than that, he exceeds (in more ways than I could ever describe) anything that I ever thought was possible.

I figured that someday (possibly years from now), when I was in a bit of a better place in my life, a man might potentially fall in love with me. But it wouldn't be until I was back to full functionality. It wouldn't be until I was steadily working and a full-time student again. It wouldn't be until my mental, emotional, and physical health were under better control. And when that guy did come into my life, he would love me enough to deal with any baggage that I still had laying around (because I knew that that crap wasn't just going to disappear).

Then in walks Jonathan. And he loves me right now, in the middle of my recovery process, as the mess that I am. And he doesn't just "deal with" my baggage. He begs me to let him carry some of it with me; to not carry it alone anymore. He doesn't like when I'm sad, but he does rejoice that he has an opportunity to deepen his love for me as he supports me.

Jonathan has an eternal perspective unlike anyone else that I've ever met.

He understands that I'm going to be healing for a very long time. Possibly forever. But he is willing to go through all of that with me because he thinks that I'm worth it. Because he loves me THAT much.

Jonathan doesn't see a broken mess. He sees someone who is being refined and built up into something greater and more beautiful than before. He sees so much more in me that I can see in myself.

Ever since Jonathan and I started to become friends, spending time with him, relying on him, opening up to him has just felt so natural. Where I would have felt anxious with others, I've always felt safe and comfortable with Jonathan. And I couldn't possibly stress enough how big of a deal that is for me.

Deciding to marry Jonathan so soon is not a decision that I made lightly.

Over those few weeks of us dating, I had ALL of the concerns. ALL of the anxiety.

What if we're not really compatible? What if he's lying about trying to recover? What if he ends up hurting me like my ex did? What if I'm not good enough for him? What if I end up in another abusive situation? Am I strong enough to not do that? What if I miss warning signs? What if I end up caring about him so much that red flags go over my head? What if what if what if?!

Oddly enough, what ended up giving me the most anxiety was actually how perfect he is for me.

No one can actually be this loving. I don't think that he's faking, but I think that there will be a point where all of my crap will get old. Where he'll realize that  "Wow, I DON'T actually want to deal with this anymore. It's way too much. This girl is messed up beyond what I can handle." And if he actually IS that good of a person, then he deserves SO much better than what I can give him. Someone this amazing deserves someone whole. He is too perfect. I can't keep putting him through this misery. I want him to be SO happy. He deserves ALL of the happiness. All I do is make his life harder. All I do is weigh him down. He deserves to be with someone that can measure up to the love and patience that he shows me. Someone this amazing can't possibly be content to be with someone like me for their whole lives. What if we get married and then he realizes a few years down the road that he wants more than what I can give him? He would be totally justified in that because he deserves more.

Holy exhausting anxiety Batman!

So believe me when I say that Heavenly Father had to seriously kick me in the pants to make me accept that marrying anyone so soon is the right thing to do. I wasn't kidding when I said that I wanted to take ALL the time to date and get to know Jonathan before marrying him. Dating was too scary. Marriage was too scary. I was freaking petrified when I thought of being vulnerable enough to fall in love again. To give my poor, fragile, cracked and healing heart to another person that could potentially shatter it again.

There was no WAY that I was going to take a decision like this lightly. And I didn't. And I don't.

If you could understand the depth of my fears, you wouldn't doubt my decision to marry Jonathan for a second. If you could see all of this through my eyes for even a second, you would know for sure that marrying Jonathan this summer would HAVE to be 112% the right thing to do for me to even consider it.

Going back to the "Holy Batman" anxiety though:

I've always struggled with self-esteem, but after being abused, I really struggle to believe that I could ever possibly deserve to be treated as well as Jonathan treats me. That I actually am worth all of the baggage. That it is possible for someone to see so much in me to love. Enough for them to want to be with me forever.

But Jonathan does! He really, truly does!

And even now, I struggle to believe that I can possibly deserve someone like him.

Jonathan is literally one of the most Christlike people that I have ever met. The love and respect that he shows me is unreal. Like, it is really hard for me to believe that he is a real person. It's like he's one of the three Nephites or something.

But he is real. And the love that he has for me is real. And the respect that he treats me with is real. And his desire to be with me FOREVER is real.

It's like Heavenly Father specifically prepared Jonathan to be my husband. Every experience, every hardship, every bit of growth that Jonathan has had in his life has shaped him into the person that I need. A person who is endlessly patient with me, doesn't see me as a burden or as broken, and only loves me more and more through every hardship.

And I know that Heavenly Father loves me, but that He loves me enough to hand-craft a spouse for me blows my mind.

I was thinking one night about the law of opposition and the concept of compensation. The law of opposition being that there is an opposition in all things. We can't be happy if we have never been sad. And the concept of compensation being that every trial that we go through will be compensated an hundredfold back in blessings.

I have been through some pretty gnarly trials. Let's say that I've been through level 5 billion trials between health problems, abuse, and felony. And Jonathan is the compensation for that. Which makes Jonathan a level 5 billion x 100 blessing.

What?!?!

THAT is pretty dang cool to me.

And he really is. He really is (at LEAST) a 5 billion x 100 blessing in my life. When I'm with him, I feel so safe, so comfortable, and so incredibly loved.

And that doesn't mean that the anxiety disappears completely when I'm with him. Because it doesn't.

When he came to visit for a week for us to get our engagement pictures taken and give the porn talk in choir, I ended up having major anxiety one night that resulted in him not being allowed to touch me for almost a good two hours. Not because of anything that he had done wrong. And keeping in mind that we hadn't seen each other in a month and wouldn't see each other again for another two (plus) months. We only had that one week together, and for two hours of it, he spent time with me without being able to touch me without causing my anxiety to spike.

And he didn't mind that. He wasn't upset that I wasn't "satisfying his need for physicality", which is how my ex always made me feel, resulting in sexual abuse. No, Jonathan was completely sweet and patient through the whole thing. Not even trying to hold my hand or anything without asking. And the times that I said that I wasn't ready for him to touch me yet, he was completely okay with that. And he looked for ways to comfort me that didn't involve touching me. Which can be kind of hard since most of the time when I'm sad or anxious, I really just need someone to hold me.

The amount of love that I felt coming from Jonathan during that time, though, was vast. My love for him grew so much in those couple of hours. In the midst of me feeling anxious.

And that's how I know that this is right. Because no matter what I'm feeling anxious about, Jonathan's presence is comforting to me. If I'm anxious about dating, the person that I'm dating is the one making me feel okay about it. If I'm anxious about physical touch, it's the person that I would usually be cuddling with that makes me feel better. That seems a bit paradoxical, but it's true with Jonathan.

And that's why all of this is coming together on Father's Day.

Because Father's Day is a day to reflect not only on your earthly father, but also your Heavenly Father, and on the important men in your life. And knowing that Jonathan is going to be the father of my children has made today really special for me in a way that it's never been before.

Because I can't imagine anyone else being my companion in life. Not only my husband, but my partner in parenthood. Underneath all of my fears about marriage and motherhood (because I'm SO excited to be a mom, but am also basically terrified), I honestly can't wait to see Jonathan be a dad. And not just A dad, but the dad of MY kids. I can't imagine traversing this crazy, tumultuous life with anyone else. Because I know that Jonathan is going to be right there by my side through every single trial, fear, and insecurity. I know that if anyone can help me to be the kind of mom that I want to be, it's him.

(There is so much that I could say about all of this future parenting stuff, but I won't because this is already long. I'm sure I'll end up writing about it later. Suffice it to say that since I struggle to take care of myself all the time, the thought of being responsible for a tiny baby human is scary. But as I sat in sacrament meeting today thinking about the Fatherly attributes of God, it was so easy for me to see those same attributes in Jonathan. And it made the prospect of being a mother even more exciting for me because I'm going to have the best dad at my side as well as my Father watching over me and my family. But I digress.)

My blog has focused so much on everything that happened to me that broke me and everything that I have gone through since to try to heal. And being with Jonathan has been the best thing that could ever have happened to me to help me in that healing process. I am able to be so much more because of him. Because God sent Jonathan to be my angel.

So on this weekend of my blog anniversary and mine and Jonathan's anniversary I just want to say that I will be forever grateful for all that my blog has done (and will continue to do) for me and all that Jonathan does for me (which is A LOT). And on this Father's Day, I want to give a shout out to my Heavenly Father who has been with me every single moment (and will continue to be there for me for every moment of the rest of my life), and for the man that He sent to be with me in all of those moments now too.

I literally could not ask for anyone better.