to reconcile it with my past views of selflove. How was I supposed to love my body when it was attacking itself, attacking me? The discourses of body-positivity were suddenly incredibly difficult to apply when chronically ill, and even harder, I imagined, with disability. Looking to answer my questions, I turned to online communities, where I found people with my same hilariously dark sense of humor about injections and poop jokes, but no satisfying answers about loving your body as a chronically ill individual. The best answer that I can come to is that even if
doesn’t invalidate my past challenges—I do not need to be constantly suffering to be valid in the community. It’s been a year since my flare-up and diagnosis, and while my life has definitely been changed forever, I can mostly forget about the illness aside from my twicemonthly injection days. It’s been strange coming back to Wellesley: I had no idea how much I associated certain places, such as Tower dining hall, with the physical suffering of Crohn’s, and I have to learn how to mentally re-navigate these spaces with the knowledge that I’m okay.
mind that I’ll have another flare-up and the knowledge that one day, my body will start producing antibodies to fight back against my immunosuppressant medication, rendering it much less effective. When that day comes, be it in six months or six years, I’ll be ready. In the meantime, I have a new appreciation for life like never before—every adventure I have the energy to go on, every moment spent with friends, every delicious meal, and every good night’s sleep is infinitely more precious. With my new health and zest for life, I’m thrilled to embrace my
my ill body doesn’t comply with standards of beauty set by both society and myself, it’s beautiful because it keeps fighting, and despite being sick, wants to survive and let me thrive, even if it’s struggling to do so. Today, my body is more or less back to how it was before. I’ve been in full remission since early spring and was able to have an amazing time abroad. I’m incredibly lucky and privileged that it’s all worked out so well for me, to the point where I feel strangely guilty calling myself a Crohn’s disease patient or chronically ill, though I know that my current health
Remission itself has presented its own challenges: I’ve had to accept the fact that there is truly no going back to how my life was before. Whether it’s fatigue from my medication, stomach upsets from traveling, or the constant blood tests I have to undergo, remission does not mean a pre-Crohn’s life. Sometimes it’s similar, and I feel the best I’ve felt in four years, but sometimes, when all I can do is sleep, I am heavily reminded of the weight of my chronic illness. I celebrate my health at every chance I get since I won’t be out of the woods until there’s actually a cure. There is always the fear at the back of my
last year at Wellesley and make up for lost time. I am not defined solely by my illness or its current stage, and I am no less beautiful in remission or during a flareup—I am defined, I’ve decided, by my strength, by my force in pushing through, in the courage of opening up about my pain to loved ones, by my desire to live and love as fully as I can, in sickness or in health.
Laura Mayron ’16 (lmayron@wellesley.edu) is a lover of the smiling poop emoji and a hater of one-ply toilet paper.
counterpoint / october 2015
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