Member-only story
Lived Through This
Learning to Get Comfortable Talking About My Shit
On Crohn’s disease, desirability, and internalized disableism
CN: internalized ableism/disablism (and much of it); gastrointestinal disease/bathroom talk
TW: emetophobia.
It’s 4:30 on a Thursday morning when I type this.
I am in the bathroom.
I have Crohn’s disease.
Crohn’s disease, if you’re unfamiliar, is a “bathroom disease.” This means, first and foremost, that I spend a lot of time in the bathroom. Like on my first day in my new home in Nashville, when I knelt on the new bath mat and laid my head against the cool porcelain of the tub as I spent hours throwing up while my roommate/childhood best friend and my boyfriend chatted downstairs. It was hours after I arrived before I even saw my bedroom. It means I have spent at least as much time in here, in this bathroom, as I’ve spent in my bedroom since I moved in, if you don’t count sleeping hours.
It means I have symptoms that society generally considers gross, unfeminine, and irredeemably unattractive — I usually let people figure it out by having them Google the name of my diagnosis, which tells them absolutely nothing about my particular situation but at…
