It's Okay to Be Affected
This afternoon, I went to get a massage - it had been a while, and it felt like a good time to do something kind for my body. As always, the massage therapist asked if there was anything she should be aware of as she was working on me - I told her that I was just there to do something kind for my body, but that my Crohn's was more active than normal and I was on new medication, which had side effects that were giving me trouble. (My new pills have made my skin extremely dry; no amount of drinking water or putting on lotion makes it better, and it's keeping me up at night. I haven't had a full night's sleep for the better part of a week.)
A sympathetic expression came over her face; "we'll take care of you," she said. And it was a moment of such comfort.
For most of my life, I've erred on the side of keeping information to myself. It's always seemed super important to me, for whatever reason, that anyone I'm interacting with thinks that everything is okay with me. It feels like a survival tactic - to always appear competent, in control, able to do anything, which means never letting on if something is wrong.
After my years of therapy, though, I'm learning to loosen that up - to be more honest, to share more. And I'm noticing how comforting it is to have those moments with people. Not always - sometimes people will react really strongly, in a well-intentioned way, to a point where I then feel on the spot to comfort *them*.
But in the moments like today, when I was honest with someone and they show me that they hear me and they wish things were better, it makes me feel a sense of relief - a sense that a possibility exists, somehow, that I don't have to carry everything myself. And that, to me, is nothing short of a miracle.