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Hello people!

Something has been laying on my heart and I just feel the need to vent. I'm sure many of you have seen The Fault In Our Stars (TFIOS) or at least heard all the hub-bub about it. I know it technically was written for a tween audience and I am "too old" to be reading such books, and yes while the love story thing is a bit elementary, there are so many reasons this book is so close to my heart. No, I don't have cancer....but I am sick. And a lot of the struggles the characters went through I can so closely relate to, and I feel like it's not something people really understand.

Between that and a new ABC Family show, there seem to be a lot of shows about cancer, or someone's battle with cancer. And I am in NO WAY, AT ALL belittling the condition or saying it's not a devastating diagnosis - because it is - but I feel like so often people forget that cancer isn't the only sickness out there.

Despite my incredible support system and my brain telling me that I shouldn't care what people think about me, a part of me does. Even though I've been using my wheelchair part time for about 5 years now I'm still incredibly self-conscious about it. And even when I use it I feel like I need to not move my legs so people think I really need it - even though I can move my legs and really DO need it. People assume since I'm young and LOOK healthy that I'm just lazy and misusing a grandparent's handicap tag, when really it's mine and I feel the need to exaggerate my limp to "prove" it's legit. And it shouldn't be that way. So many people do misuse these things and it's caused a stigma that screws the rest of us. So many people are stricken with invisible illnesses, one of which is cancer, but somehow cancer people are the only ones that get "cancer perks" as they're called in TFIOS. Those little benefits that people let you "get away with" because you're sick.

TFIOS captures so perfectly the emotional and mental struggle we face in how we tell friends and family about our health and to what extent. Though my illnesses are not terminal, I still feel like a grenade as Hazel does, set to go off and destroy anyone in my wake. So I have a few close friends who know everything and I know I can count on, but other than that I keep the "collateral damage" to a minimum. I feel like I am a burden sometimes to my friends and family, and the more people I let in are just more people I could possibly hurt as a result of not being able to do things. And you also get the over zealous parent who overanalyzes EVERY situation or feeling you have - it happens. And I have to be real honest....there are days when I relate to when Hazel says "I just don't want this particular life". There are bad days when it is seems impossible to find the good in a situation where you're suffering all the time for something you had no control over.

There were a lot of "negative" things that I thought the movie portrayed very realistically. But what I love so much about this movie is that the whole overhead "moral" of the story is that although life can suck sometimes and it can be filled with the struggles of a sickness - there is still love and happiness to be had. And words can't explain how much easier and happier life can be when friends and family, and random people I run into - understand that I am sick, and I do things a little differently - but that doesn't make me lazy or any less of a person. One of my professors as of late has several times (in front of other people, no less) made derogatory comments about my need for rest or that I can't run around or do everything the other students can, and her ignorance hurts me. The tone in which she says these things, and things I have heard from many others, is one in which it's like she doesn't believe me. Like if I'm not hooked up to an IV or in a wheelchair all the time or have some physical deformity I can't really be sick.

All this rambling to say - be kind to everyone you meet. Those of us who are sick may not show it on the outside, and the judgment and accusations of being lazy or unmotivated to work/go to school/be social/whatever is simply not true and in fact very hurtful. Movies like TFIOS tell a story that many of us don't talk about or can't find the words to explain so very well. So instead of the knee-jerk reaction of judgement to a young person in a wheelchair who isn't paralyzed, or a friend being too tired to go out to eat....try compassion instead. I promise you it will mean the world to that person that you took just a split second to think about life in their shoes before accusing them of something because you don't understand.