I am an independent spirit, always have been. Ask my parents – I was the kid who couldn’t wait to learn how to walk so I could run off wherever I wanted to go. I was the kid who was fearless – the first in my family to travel across oceans, not at all concerned about becoming an exchange student in a country where I didn’t know a single word in the language besides Auf Wiedersehen, not too worried about disease and what-not when I later decided to spend a semester of college in one of the poorest villages in India. I grew up with an attitude that I was going to conquer the world, and no one was going to stop me. It never occurred to me that something might stop me.
It was with some devastation and horror that I realized that Crohn’s colitis had fundamentally damaged this aspect of me. After having the disease for several years, I became psychologically dependent on my husband. It crept up on me; I didn’t notice it as it was happening. Then one day I realized I was afraid to leave the house without him. It’s not that he would really be able to help me if I had a bathroom emergency. It was that I needed the moral support of his presence.
If I got too exhausted to make it home again, he would take care of me, whatever that meant. If it meant driving, he would drive. If it meant just letting me lean on him on the train ride home, half-asleep, he had a ready shoulder. Especially when we lived in Chicago, I felt that I did not have the energy to protect myself in public. When you’re out in a city, you need to have awareness of your surroundings, you need to have the energy to project confidence and to protect yourself from unwanted energy. I didn’t have that; I felt vulnerable without my husband there to protect me.
This flew in the face of my self image as well as my ideal of what coequal marriage should be. I didn’t want to be the damsel in distress. I didn’t want to be afraid to leave my own house, or to feel vulnerable. Every time I did leave the house on my own, it was a really big deal. I had to psych myself up, think through where I was going to go, how I was going to get back. I had to have a plan. And usually the whole experience wasn’t very fun because I was so full of anxiety the entire time. I would get somewhere and think, Okay, I made it. Maybe I’ll just go home now. And I would turn around and go home, as if just going somewhere was some kind of test of myself. Making it there and back again was the proof that I hadn’t lost myself entirely.
Having ileostomy surgery has its tradeoffs, but one of many things that I am so grateful for is the feeling of independence. Once again, I feel unafraid to go wherever I want to go, by myself. I know that I can get there, and I know I can make it home again. I know that I have the energy to maintain awareness of my surroundings, and I know how to protect myself. Once again, I begin to dream of traveling around the world. I feel unafraid, because I know that I can rely on myself.
