Please Do Not Apply For This Life

Throughout life, people try and gain the attention of those around them for various reasons. Maybe its trying to gain the attention of someone that you like by being flirtatious. In the case of an aspiring athlete, it's by sending letters and performing well when scouts

come to watch. In the case of a potential boss, it's presenting oneself professionally and providing an adequate resume. Children will even act out positively and negatively in order to gain the attention of their parents, teachers, and their peers. These are all understandable—and natural—parts of life. What I do NOT understand is pretending to have a chronic, incurable, or terminal illness in order to gain the attention of anyone.

You think I'm joking, right? I'm not.

Recently, not far from where I live, a woman was caught for faking having cancer. She duped friends, family, and countless others into thinking she was terminal, when, in fact, she was not sick with cancer at all. For what purpose? Attention. Money. Sympathy. She got what she wanted, for a time. Personally, I have come across people on Instagram who are faking being ill with various illnesses—and not even getting the actual definition of the illness correct—deleting their profiles and starting over when they're called out. Some go even as far as to tape and glue on fake feeding tubes with string and noodles! For what purpose? Attention. Gifts. Sympathy.

My question is this: Why!?!

Why on EARTH would you willingly invite—albeit falsely—these illnesses into your life? Why on EARTH would you want to be like any of us? Do you know what Gastroparesis, migraines, vertigo, and IBS has given me? Urgent care visits...Emergency room visits...IV sticks...CAT scans...MRIs...countless medications...the loss of eating many foods...the implantation of a gastric neurostimulator...and SO much more. And I am one of the LUCKY ones! Chronic Illness Warriors are all women and men who did not ASK to be ill, but, instead, became this way by no choice of our own. We

would WILLINGLY give up our illness(es)--not give them to anyone, but get rid of them—to be healthy and free! We often have to fight, FIGHT to have those in our circle understand what it is that we experience on a daily basis...the pain...the fatigue...the nausea...the unrelenting doctors visits...the loneliness we feel because people just DO NOT UNDERSTAND. And then when we feel like we've found a community where we've found people who are going through the same things we are, we have to be guarded, we have to almost quiz people to make sure that they TRULY are ill.

That is truly very sad. 

Can I be honest? Just go. Just go and be healthy and live your lives. Go be flirty with a guy (or a girl), go ride rollercoasters with

reckless abandon, go annoy your classmates. Be ADVOCATES for us, but don't try and BE one of us. It's not a life that you want. Not at all.