I look like your average twenty-something-year-old. I post too many selfies on Instagram, I go to school, I laugh out loud, and I drink half my weight in Starbucks coffee every morning before work. To anyone passing by, I am just a normal, healthy girl. Except that I’m not. I have a condition called Crohn’s Disease. On the outside I look just like anyone else might, but on the inside my body is attacking itself.

You tell me I don’t look sick, so I must be dramatizing my condition or faking it. What you don’t see are the dark circles underneath my eyes that I had to conceal with makeup because I didn't get any sleep last night due to how much pain I was in. You don’t see the 20 pills that I took with breakfast this morning before going to class or the 10 more I have in my bag to take with lunch. You just see the chatty girl who smiles a lot.

Sure, I have a smile on my face, but that’s just because smiling is easier than confessing all of the painful and sometimes embarrassing symptoms I feel on a daily basis because of my condition. I go to school and have a job, but that doesn't make me healthy. Some days I can't make it to class because I'm so fatigued that I can't get out of bed, let alone make it to school. But you think I'm cutting class because I am lazy. Living with an invisible illness is pretty much like living a life full of surprises: you never know when they are coming or what you're going to get. I can be on the go and seemingly okay for three weeks straight and then wake up one day out of the blue and be bed ridden in a hospital. And still you tell me I don’t look sick.

What does “sick” even look like? This is where that expression "don't judge a book by its cover" comes in handy, because the truth is chronically ill people look just like everybody else. We look just like you. When I say I'm sick, why don't you try and educate yourself on what chronic illnesses are instead of judging me based on my appearance at the moment.

Everyone is fighting some sort of battle that the rest of the world can't see. You shouldn't judge anyone because you don't know what their story is. Invisible illnesses are more common than you think; odds are you know one or two people who have them, and we deserve the same respect and empathy as anybody else out there.

Try and be more open minded to the people around you. Next time you see someone leaving work early or see a young person walking out of their car when they parked in a handicap space, just stop and think, and give them the benefit of the doubt. Those people, like me, might be suffering from a less visible illness.


Sincerely,

The chronically sick girl who is tired of being judged