In my early twenties, after my period had essentially Irish exited my body for several years, I was diagnosed with endometriosis and PCOS (now more aptly known as PMOS). Doctors performed surgery, shrugged as if I’d asked them which pizza topping they’d prefer, and handed me birth control pills that allegedly “managed” both conditions while also making me feel like I was trapped inside the nervous system of a bunny rabbit.
So naturally, with no real operating manual for my possessed little reproductive system, I took healing into my own hands. For years, this meant avoiding anything the wellness industrial complex labeled as “inflammatory” — sugar, alcohol, gluten, dairy, spontaneous whimsy. I exercised like a soldier about to depart for battle. Questionable supplements arrived in amber glass jars. I treated flax-laced sludge like a magic potion. At obscure hours of the night, I would google: “Does hypnosis help endometriosis?”
You probably saw this coming: none of that crunchy control freakism worked. I still have both of those sickies, plus a new one diagnosed last year mid-book-deadline: Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. Instead of coexisting in peace, my immune system attacks my thyroid gland for sport. I’d heard about the condition via social media and assumed it was made up — until my hair started falling out in identity altering quantities, I needed a sweater in the produce section, and getting out of bed felt like climbing Kilimanjaro in a sopping wet Canadian tuxedo.
I try not to think about any of this much. For a long time, I told myself that’s because I’m overall incredibly lucky. My life is great. I’m an optimist! What would dwelling on it do, anyway? But after reading Kristie De Garis’s short essay on her own journey with chronic illness, I’m realizing that the deeper reason I prefer not to fastidiously study the annals of my body is sadder, and far more insidious. As she writes:
“We’re told that health, like success, is something you earn through discipline, restraint, and the right behavior. If you work hard enough, comply closely enough, optimize carefully enough, improvement will follow. Chronic illness disrupts that extremely saleable, inspirational narrative. It produces people who do everything right and still don’t get better.”
That hit like a psychological clotheslining. The part I haven’t fully accepted is that I can do things that make me feel better without ever actually being better. Maybe that’s especially hard to swallow because our collective meritocratic kink insists that time and effort should always produce results. I would do almost anything to reduce the abdominal torture and mental anguish I experience monthly. And yet, none of my regimes over the years have delivered miracles. Sometimes we simply cannot brute-force a body into obedience.
I recognize in myself what De Garis describes as “internalized ableism,” and feeling biologically deficient turns out to be hella lucrative. Part of me still thinks I can girlboss my way out of chronic illness — that one day it will simply evanesce, like an exorcized Victorian ghost. I click Instagram ads peddling pills that promise to “reduce inflammation,” despite the fact that the models appear to subsist entirely on bone broth and trust funds. I buy books about wrestling my Hashimoto’s antibodies into submission. I try very hard to reduce the stress supposedly fueling my three-headed dragon, which is obviously stressful in its own right.
Mostly, I think, this impulse to fix comes from shame. If I quit micromanaging my body, then it’s my fault if I feel bad. That’s the sneaky symptom I’m trying to resist now. I want to learn how to tend to my bag of bones without swatting at it like a faulty machine. I want to find ways to make it all feel loving. To experience pain without immediately converting it into a productivity project. To admit that sometimes gentle maintenance can be its own radical act.
Anyway! Over to you:
Which perceived personal failing have you spent an objectively unreasonable amount of money trying to fix?
Has a focus on “wellness” ever started to feel more like illness?
When have you felt truly at home in your body, even briefly? What were you doing (or not doing)?
So many of these lines hit me like a knife to bone. Thank you for talking to me about this on the deck this weekend, I can't stop thinking about the ways in which we shame ourselves for our bodies acting "abnormally" (because what even is a normal body??). Your willingness to be vulnerable is such a gift and I can't thank you enough for sharing it.
Ali, I was diagnosed with Graves' Disease (the opposite thyroid condition) last fall and even though I didn't even realize I had symptoms, being medicated has been so lifechanging for me re: anxiety and my own expectations / beliefs around productivity. My productivity was in part fueled by my body attacking itself... LIKE! Anyway I'm so glad you also have found answers!