What Hurts The Most?

I met my friend Dave when we were both 15. We talked on and off for most of high school, but really connected when we were 18. We didn't see each other much. I was in college in central PA and he was up in NY working random jobs. When I was home on break we'd go to movies, or wander around the bookstore for hours, or eat fried foods at Friendly's. Once we threw knives at cardboard to test how well they worked.

When I was off at school we talked. We talked on AIM, we e-mailed, we had phone conversations. We talked so much I had to buy a bluetooth headset for my cell phone. I'd cook dinner while we talked, and then we'd watch the same TV show while talking on the phone. I told him nearly everything; we were best friends.

After nearly two years of this Dave enlisted in the army. He spent a few months in boot camp, then got sent to TX, and then a year later was preparing to go Iraq. I was a wreck in the weeks preceding his departure. I remember sitting in his jeep, not wanting to get out and watch him pull away, because maybe I'd never see him again. He told me he loved me. He told me he'd be back in the US by the following Christmas. Nothing made me feel better - watching your best friend go off to war just isn't easy.

The evening before he left we talked on the phone until he had to shut it off to put it in storage. I told him I'd e-mail. We said goodbye, and I hung up the phone, and started crying. I was sitting in my desk chair, and let myself fall onto the floor, and cry. My friend Sylvia came and hugged me while I cried. The next day, in an attempt to make me feel better, my friend Chris got some french fries from the cafeteria, and we went to play the organ for a few hours, but I felt too sick the eat the french fries.

I felt sick the next day, and the next day, too. I recall telling Dave how sick I felt in several e-mails. The sickness didn't go away, but got worse. I was exhausted, and took 3-4 hour naps every day. My stomach was cramping, and sometimes the pain was too intense to even sit/stand up. I started eating bland foods, chicken broth and saltine crackers, but that didn't help. I couldn't digest a single thing.

When my doctor diagnosed me with celiac disease a few months later, more things than just my stomach cramping and energy level improved. Problems I'd had for years and years, such as dizziness, skin rashes, and hair loss, disappeared, too. Everyone wondered what caused the celiac to become such a problem when it did, but I figured it out quickly, especially when I read that a possible trigger is emotional stress.

Sometimes, people ask us to downplay our emotional turmoil. We're told to just keep smiling, to "fake it 'till you make it", to keep living. Sometimes people tell us to be thankful that we're not sick with cancer or whatnot. I'd like to argue that hurt is hurt, pain is pain, and the lines between physical and emotional are not well defined. The things that hurt us the most, that get under our skin and stay there, are powerful. I don't care if it is an infection or a person - huge, all-encompassing hurts are possible.

I'm not saying all this to say that my life is terrible, or my disease is terrible (it isn't), or that dying of cancer isn't terrible (it is). I'm just acknowledging the emotional pain and physical pain are linked, and in many cases, just different manifestations from the same root cause.

My Dad explained it to me very simply once, when I was about 13. The word disease can be broken down into "dis" and "ease". It simply means to not be at ease.