Why do you share your story?

We were in my college's cafeteria when the question was first asked of me. We were sophomores in college at the time, and life was college "perfect." I was in a sorority and I was always surrounded by powerful and smart people. None of whom liked to show their darker sides of their lives, they wanted to keep the fasade of college up. But I will never forget this one "perfect" friend in particular. The one that REALLY craved the look of outward perfection in life. She was the one that asked me the fateful question that I will never be able to forget:

"Why do you feel the need to share your story with people?"

Her words, well they stung to my core. Crohn's Disease took so many years of my life away from me, from the age of 10 to 17. Those years made me feel like a bird in a cage. Except my cage was my own body, and no one had the keys to let me out.

My story is what I have. At the end of the day all we have in this lifetime is ourselves, and our past. Telling people my story gave it meaning. Putting words to memories helped solidify them in my own mind, to actually acknowledge everything that had happed to me, it gave me power.

Being questioned about it was new to me. It was the first time I felt the hands of society try and close in and silence me, I was talking about the gross parts of life, the unseen moments. I was naming pain and allowing it to give my story meaning, I was sharing my dark moments and giving them light. Not many people have the desire to air their dark moments out in the light to others. For me, I have been called to do it since the beginning.

Hearing my perfect friend question my words caused me to be silence myself for a time after that. I morphed into the girls around me and tried to conform to the societal ways. But chronic disease, especially Crohns, does not care at all about matters of the societal realm. It honestly hates it all to an extent, because whenever I am exposed to too much of "it" my disease lashes out and inflames itself, causing silence to be the only thing needed.

I was starting to feel the pains of silence deep within me. My body was building up upon this stagnant hold onto my truth. The energy was welling up inside of me and showing up as pain throughout it. I was getting random illnesses and always felt completely burnt out.

Never quite sure which day it was when it all clicked inside of me, when I stopped letting my dear friend control the aspects of my life. I realized she was the first "perfect" person I had come in contact with. Someone who wishes that life was so perfect that they will force their own beliefs onto you, silencing your true shadows from coming out. These people are scared to have their own darkness come to light, because they are afraid to face their own truth.

Throughout this experience one thing continued to ring true for me, life is about both the good and the bad, if there is no bad things in this life, then the good never feels as well as it can. If we conform to society and silence ourselves in order to not face the real darkness inside, then we are never truly being ourselves. This life is about so much more than being perfect, or striving towards this unattainable perfectionism. It's about feeling it all, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and embracing it as this one true life.

By never sharing what I had been going through, by not honoring the darker sides to my life, I was never being true to myself. I was trying to ignore my own truth--which is easy to do when you do not want to face the fact that your own disease is such a pivotal part of your life. But in this lifetime the best thing to do for myself was to face it head on, accept it, and start honoring my own truth.

I lost friends in the meantime, some friends are only there for a season, and sometimes they are only meant to handle the prettier seasons of your life. I have found others who can help me weather the stormier seasons of my life. They are the people who can look darkness in the face and come to terms with it, they are not afraid to discard the mask of perfection.

I guess what I am trying to say is this: life is hard, there is no way around that, so why NOT share your story with someone? Why NOT allow yourself to be completely open and transparent? You never know who you might save in the mean time, you never know who may be drawn to your light.

It's all about shining our own light into our darkness at the end of the day.