Connections

We make connections every day.

We make connections with people that transform us.

We make connections with things they transport us to a different time.

We make connections with places that remind us of how far we've come.

We make connections with songs that bring us back.

We make a connection with our past that sheds light on current behaviors and past patterns.

Some of these connections happen in a flash of a second. Others take days, weeks, months, or years to bring to light. Some connections last for days, weeks, months, years, decades, or a lifetime while others are chance passing moments on a train that flees as fast as it appeared.

I make a lot of connections in my life. I've always prided myself in making lasting, meaningful connections with people where they feel seen, heard, and understood. More recently, I've been making deep connections with my previous behaviors and patterns that allow me to feel seen, heard, and understood by me.

Typically, these connections are slower, more gradual. They come with time and a lot of talking through situations with various people or my therapist to land on the explanation. My most recent connection was not the case. It hit me like a ton of bricks while I was straightening up one of the guest rooms on board. The connection allowed me to explain the GI issues I've been suffering from for just under 5 years.

Growing up, I was always a rather gassy child. I could belch with the best of them, and to be quite frank, still can. While I've managed to subdue that behavior by slowing down my eating, there are still times I'm ravenous and gulp down my food like I'll never eat again for 1,000 years and end up sounding like a small animal is living inside my tummy trying to growl it's way out. Outside of that, I was always proud of having an iron clade stomach. Who I inherited it from is still a mystery, but I was glad I had it.

I never took advantage of the situations, always eating relatively healthy. On occasion, my diet involved enough fast food, pizza, and alcohol consumption to impress any frat daddy in the southeast. As I settled into my graduate school's routine in my late 20's, these benders coincided with traveling home for the holidays, where I would take a 14-hour ride home and stretch it into a 5-7 day journey of seeing friends and family down the east coast. My route was never direct but always enjoyable. The majority of the time, these were the only times I saw these friends or relatives throughout the year. Thus my normal health-conscious habits flew out the window, and I just enjoyed the quality time spent with them—this the season, after all.

All of this was fine and dandy until December of 2015. I had my first, what I would refer to as, "episode" on my journey home. I woke up in the middle of the night, laying on my right side, being a side sleeper that wasn't abnormal. What was bizarre was my abrupt awakening caused by an intense amount of pain in my right side. I knew somehow I had to get off my right side, but the pain was so severe I couldn't just roll over. I had to use my arm strength to roll myself over to my back and, eventually, my left side. This action subdued the pain enough for me to be able to fall back asleep. I awoke 2 more times that evening with the same issue. While the pain wasn't quite as severe, there is no question. It was the pain that had woken me up. The following morning, there was a feeling that lingered on my right side. A dull annoyance, I have a hard time explaining because it's not something I felt before. It didn't hurt per se, but it also didn't feel normal.

I assumed at that point; the pain had been caused by my diet choices the night before. My cousin and I had been out the night before enjoying our dinner of pizza and beer. While this combo had never created this reaction in the past, it wasn't my usual choice. Also, that whole week involved similar delicious but not so nutritious choices. The episode worried me, but I did my best to let it go. Not dwell on the issue.

Over the following two months, the pain would come and go. It was never the extreme of the first episode, but it would ebb and flow from my flank with no particular rhyme or reason. I tried to pinpoint it to diet choices. Sometimes pizza and beer would set it off, sometimes salad and chicken breast. I considered the time of day as being a factor. Sometimes it would be a dull nagging pain throughout the day, others the intense pain at night. The only thing remaining consistent was the pain was there. After two months of telling my "Maine Mom" of the issues, she insisted I was going to the doctor. Set it up herself.

The initial doctor's appointment set into motion a 3-month long process of doctor visits. She thought the episode and lingering pain was due to three things, appendix, gallbladder, or ovaries. All of which are located on your right side. Due to the original flare-up details, all could be the culprit.

After roughly two months of different random specialist appointments to look at all the various organs of concern, results came back normal—no visible problem in any area. Thus, the next and final step to the medical mystery was to get a colonoscopy to eliminate any possibility of random growth, blockage, or cancer. At least that's what I assumed they were looking at; I honestly have no idea.

Three months after all the doctor's visits started, I moved to a different apartment while prepping for a colonoscopy on Memorial Day weekend. Yes, the fun life and times of Laura Beth! I was moving in with a fellow graduate student, who also had many digestion issues. Thus she was more than understanding and happy to assist me to the hospital and hang out the following day.

I will say having a colonoscopy at 28 isn't ideal, and EVERYONE at the hospital has no idea why you are there since everyone else is roughly 30 years older than yourself. But I listened to the doctors, had the procedure done to find out my colon was healthy as a horse. Considering my diet, exercise activities, and youth, this isn't a huge surprise, and it was a relief to rule out. However, now the doctor wanted to go back to the drawing board of what could be wrong with me. She wanted to order more tests. Of what? Who knows? But after the past three months doing everything they asked, including having a camera stuck up my ass, I wasn't amused.

I walked out of the doctor's office with two-grand in bills and zero answers. I was done with this doctor and walked away. Overall there hadn't been another severe episode since the first one 6 months ago, and I had chalked it all up to another stress of being in graduate school with a shit-ass advisor.

Since the initial flare-up and doctors' visits, I've had 2 other severe episodes. Both occurring in the overnight hours after a night out with less than desirable diet choices. For each of the episodes, I was also stressed due to my job for one reason or another. Neither of the times was I sincerely taking care of myself.

Fast forward to late summer/fall of 2020. I decide to take on a modified version of 75-hard. For those of you who don't know the basics of this challenge, it's pretty simple, for 75 days, you have to pick a diet and stick to it without any cheat meals involved, cut alcohol from your diet, read 10 pages a day from a non-fiction book, take a daily progress picture, and drink a gallon of water. I knew my biggest challenge here would be not drinking AT ALL for 75 days straight. I actually went 83 days without a drink. In the last month of the challenge, I had not only cut alcohol, I added dairy, gluten, soy, caffeine, and sugar.

Why those 6?

Because they are the most common agitators in the American diet, my growing theory on my persistent stomach issues was I had severely agitated something within my digestive tract that never had the chance to heal itself. Thus, it was time to do some serious healing.

Overall the diet was simple. I missed coffee the most, yet I feel it was the most at fault for my ever-present issues. In the end, I added each item back in gradually as they tell you to do to figure out the cause of the irritation. I found soy-based protein products to be an issue of digestion, but overall that was it. I could eat and drink without restriction. I felt the best I had in 5 years. I had finally fixed my issues.

Connection to personal life…

My digestive issues started in the winter of 2015, a month after I met Sam. We had chatted every day since the day I met him. We were constantly texting during the day to the point of being a distraction to my work and late-night phone calls when I could sneak away from my current boyfriend at the time. I was not proud of this behavior. In hindsight, I'm quite ashamed of it, but I'm not here to paint myself in perfect lighting. I'm here to be true and honest to myself and you regardless of how ashamed I am. Looking back on it, Sam was the tipping point. The lies I kept from so many about my true feelings for Sam was the tipping point for my health.

I was already enduring high amounts of stress disguised as responsibility in graduate school.

I had spent the entirety of that fall, hiding the current relationship I was in from all my friends and family upon my current boyfriend's request. Only revealing to our close friends, we were an item in November.

My advisor had threatened me with my graduating earlier that fall due to me falling on the wrong side of favoritism in his eyes. I didn't have a dick. I couldn't be his bro. It wasn't okay for me to point out inappropriate behavior between his favorite graduate student, an engaged male, and a much younger undergraduate student.

Overall, I wasn't in a good place. I wasn't in a healthy place mentally. I was in graduate school. Stress, drama, and conflict, aka mental instability, was part of what you signed up.

When I added my secret romance with Sam on top of it, my body couldn't take it. It broke. I broke.

I'm not saying this was out of my control. I'm not saying I'm a victim of circumstance. At this point in my life, I was still using the majority of people in my life for what they could give to me. I was self-involved. Life was always very unfair at this point.

What I was doing with Sam was wrong.

How I was treating my Ewok was wrong.

The stress I was inducing to myself was wrong.

I could've had a cold hard reality check and changed my behaviors. I didn't; I allowed it to continue. Why?

Hurt people, hurt people.

I continued to allow Sam in my life for the next 5 years. Our off and on affair outlasted 3 boyfriends and at least half a dozen flings. Something about him fed my ego. He always had impeccable timing. As if he knew the scab had almost turned to a scar, and it was time to rip it open again.

In December of 2019, I sincerely thought I was done with him. I had just found out from a mutual friend he was living with his girlfriend. I don't know why this news devastated me more than the news of him dating her, but it did. I broke down. Swore to my best friend, it was the last time he was tearing my heart from my chest.

Then, they broke up. He re-entered my life, strictly on a friend basis. I told him that's all it could be. He meant too much to me for us to be a casual fling. We were on that trajectory for a solid 6 months when he invited me to Chicago to visit him. Since I was so bored with COVID limiting my normal travel activities, I figured why not. It would be fun. It was a fun trip. A normal trip. We hooked up. There were promises of future visits later in the fall. Upon my return, it became apparent quickly the promises would never be filled. I wasn't surprised. I could handle that. He had given enough to keep the flame pseudo lite.

Until I had a casual conversation with a mutual friend, it was roughly the third time Sam was brought up in our discussions. I had an underlying feeling I should ask her about their relationship. I got the answer I had feared. While their relationship wasn't as extensive, Sam had also invited her to Chicago the weekend before my visit.

For the entirety of our relationship, the one thing Sam did for me as he made me feel special. He made me feel I was different than all the other girls. He always made me feel that it was just distance that kept us apart. And for the first time, I knew I was nothing special. For the first time, he made me feel like any other girl in his life. Maybe he had portrayed similar behavior before, but I didn't get the message till that moment in that conversation with my now good friend. It was the hardest betrayal I've felt from someone in my life to date.

The timing for the betrayal was interesting; I was in the middle of my 75-hard challenge. Life is a tricky bitch. I was going through one of the most painful times in my life without my number one numbing agent, alcohol. The timing sucked. The timing was perfect. The timing made me finally process and heal all the pain from Sam. All the pain from so many past rejections and failed relationships.

Instead of escaping, brushing it off like usual, I faced it head-on, instead of crying endlessly with the typical why me, why again, self-induced agony. I looked at the behaviors that had gotten me to this point. I was ready to change. I was ready to heal. While it was one of the hardest betrayals of my life, I was shocked at how easily I let it go. How easily I accepted what was happening as just something happening to me. It wasn't about me; I could've been any number of girls to get hurt by him in this way. I wasn't different. I wasn't special. It wasn't about me.

Hurt people, hurt people.

It was what I needed to move on. I moved on. I healed. For the first time in 5 years, I was truly able to focus on myself, on my healing. The emotional healing I found within myself in the following days, weeks, and month after hearing the news about Sam gave me the strength to start showing up for myself finally. To finally find my self-worth.

The biggest betrayal I have found from one person finally lead me to find within myself what I had been searching for in someone else my entire life. While I know the work leading up to the Fall of 2020 and the support I had from my friends significantly expedited the healing process, I do not feel I would've shown up for myself in the way I had without being completely let down by someone I cared so much for in my life.

Up until a week ago, I assumed it was an interesting coincidence. Things in my life were aligning, and the lack of stomach cramps, flank pain, and horrendous gas was just a result of my diet change. I believe it still played a role, but I believe long-lasting ailments that can not be healed or explained by western medicine can always hold an emotional component. There is a reason most drugs tested do not make it to market; the placebo is just as effective and, in some cases, more effective than the actual drug itself. What does this tell us? The mind is a potent drug in itself. You have more control over your circumstances than you are giving yourself credit for. For some, that will come as a relief. The knowledge is a way to fix what they do not currently desire in their lives. For others, this is not good news.

For me, it truly is a relief. While I realize, as I hope most of you did after 2020, life is not entirely in our control. No matter how safe, secure, and protected, we may feel we have built our homes, livelihoods, and personal bodies, they can be compromised. We are not as much in the driver's seat as we would like to think. The only thing we can control is our mindsets and our reaction to what is happening around us. Thus, when unexplainable pains or traumas are happening to your body, take a second look. Take the second look inside for a change.

Since initially coming up with this post because, yes, the writing process takes a second, a doctor has brought it to my attention kidney stones could cause these pains. You may ask, well, aren't kidney stones painful to pass? Yes, usually, but apparently, you can pass them sans pain. Thus, if I have another "episode," I will be sure to investigate the kidney stone option since it was never looked at in the first round of diagnostics, and it is pretty easy to get a CT scan to determine kidney stones!