Maybe we'll be butterflies

I think it's really funny when people meet me now, at this age and stage of my life. The recent perception seems to be that I'm a grand optimist, a girly girl who has it all together. I can understand why people think that, but I know their why is because that's what they see. The real why is because of what I've lived.

I've had enough pain in my past for multiple lifetimes, mental and physical. The Crohn's feels like one lifetime all on it's own, and surviving that has boosted my optimism considerably. I do think I'm a bright person, I like to see others happy, but I also know I have laid in my mother's arms and tried to will God to take me that night. I have used the restroom on myself in public places, not been able to bathe or lift my arms long enough to get a shirt over my head. I have been low. I have been in the darkest corners of my personality, I've seen myself want to give up. When you've been through a storm, a real storm, a little rain doesn't seem so bad. And the rain might be serious, causing a flood, but when you've been through worse, you find a way to handle it.

And not just the Crohn's, but life has tried me every year of my life, so to see me at 27 means you see a survivor. A girl who has decided that the sun is already under my umbrella, and there's nothing you can do about it. I still get upset, I still get confused, I still have challenges, but so far, for the most part I like the decisions I have made in life and where they have taken me. Speaking of which, I used to wear silver eyeliner in the ninth grade. I wanted to be more girly, I was always kinda tomboyish. I didn't dress like a guy, but I had on jeans and a sweater or a huge jacket everyday and I didn't care what anyone thought. I was warm and the clothes were functional.

As women, we wake up everyday and put this war paint on and go out into the world hoping to be respected and noticed and labeled human because we look good. I tried to fight it as long as I could, then I found joy in assimilating. I'm not a makeup queen. I still wear my sweater and jeans every chance I get, but you really do have to dress the part - so I'm learning how to wear makeup. I'm learning my best clothing combinations. I'm flattered that some people see me and think I'm a fashionista because bay-beh, I'm nowhere close, but I sure will slide under the radar!

I don't have it all together. This morning Reverend Cosby preached on living what we've learned, and that hit me, hard. It really is one thing to learn a lesson, and a totally different piece to apply what you've learned. I am trying to live what I have learned. No one knows your whole story but you. People who are meeting you at this age and stage in your life will see you as you are in front of them. They won't see the lifetimes before, the struggles and trials and joys and experiences that brought you to them. Smile at them. Smile at their perceptions and know that in a short while, maybe a lifetime's worth of moments, you'll be another person then, too.