The Life of Me, Smile Magee :)

I came into 2017 with a twinkle in my eye, and the knowledge that I wasn’t currently actively dying in my heart. Thanks to a Miracle ( the accidental discovery that my body and all it’s faulty parts LOVE and NEED prednisone ) I was finally off IV nutrition. I was gaining weight ( I was starting to resemble a women with actual curves, instead of an alien that desperately needed a cheeseburger) My body was attempting to digest food. ( I looked extremely pregnant.. but hey my urine wasn’t full of ketones. So I counted that as a major success!) I had a team of doctors that I deeply trusted. And I thought 2018 was going to be MY YEAR. Maybe the year I start school, Go on a grand adventure. And leave hospitals, IVs, and appointments in the past where they belonged. Me and my best friend have a tradition We started about when we were like 8 years old. that whatever song we hear at midnight on New Year’s Day is our theme song for the year.. And when it was “ The Greatest” by Sia I was just CE

Dear August, Here we are again. I nearly forgot about your existence. And then Your arrival looms over me like a dark cloud. When back-to-school commercials start infecting the television And pictures of yellow school busses, and happy healthy children are plastered all over every store. I know that just days after you arrive everyone’s world will be out of “pause” And mine still will be. While the bright-eyed college kids I dream of being enter their dorms, prepared to unleash their potential to the world. I will continue to enter doctors’ offices. I will continue to fight a war with my health that may never end. I will be in the exact same place I was four years ago Where I felt I literally needed to put my job description on Facebook as “trying not to die.” Because after you come, August, People will stare, like I’ve grown a third head. Like no 21-year-old belongs in a non-college town. And continually ask me “how school is going.” And when I smile and say “I’m