Shouldn't Have to Lie

Last week I kinda stopped functioning for three days.  I didn't go to classes, didn't go to my assistantship, and had to tell something to the professorly people who would care.

I told all my professors that I have a "chronic condition that flared up recently."  It seemed like the best thing to say.  It implies "I won't be coughing for three weeks after I come back because this isn't the flu so don't think I'm playing hooky."  (I always worry about people thinking I'm playing hooky.)  It also implies "don't ask."

My advisor, I told him I have a "chronic pain condition that flared up recently."  That additional word might've been a mistake, but, come to think of it, it probably would've played out the same way with or without it.

Him: So you have a pain problem?

Me: Yeah.

Him: Can I ask where?

Here is the point where you say, as I read somewhere recently, "why do you want to know?"  But I'm not that sharp.

Me: My whole body.

It's not actually a complete lie.  I have full-body pain when I eat gluten, and that's why it's such a handy thing to say.

But it's still a lie.

And I shouldn't have to lie.

I swore, I swore in those split seconds leading up to that question that I was gonna say "in my vulva."  Four syllables, not even a complete sentence, all words I've said before.  But my advisor was born before there were vulvas, and anyway he's not a native English speaker, and I never have a Japanese-English dictionary handy, and without one I'd be forced to demonstrate.

And I was never going to say it anyway.

I think lying bothers me most because I feel like there's never been a time in my adult life when I didn't have something to lie about.  Before I was lying to avoid saying "depression" and "anxiety."  Now I'm lying to avoid saying "vulva."

I don't want to lie anymore.

But I don't want to invite people into my internal affairs either, brain or panties.

So I guess the answer is not to say anything.  If someone asks why or where or what and I don't want to tell the truth, I'll tell a different truth, like "I'd rather not say."

Crotch Update

I tried going low-fiber/low-residue as recommended for Crohn's and similar digestive problems, just to test the theory that if you have IBS, you can't recover while eating lots of fiber.

I had to make some exchanges to cut back on fiber.  For instance, I tried adding jelly and fruit juice back to my diet, and I paid for it immediately.  Both gave me acute bladder and urethra pain not long after I ate them.  I haven't eaten any whole fruit besides bananas in a long time, and I think I'll hold off on the others for a while.

I also tried milk, and that was an owie.  I don't know that it did anything to my cooch, but I get really sharp pains in my gut several hours after drinking milk, when it gets down to my large intestine.

However, switching away from a high-vegetable diet made my bowel movements much better.  (Why do I find poop more TMI than vulvas?  I always get weirded out when I start writing about it.)  When I was eating a ton of veggies (plus a lot of raw nuts), I'd wake up every morning to a crampy stomach and have weird things flying out my butt as soon as I got to the toilet.  That's how it was when I was vegan too, except it happened multiple times a day.  I expected it to settle down over time, but it never did.

Now that I've laid off the veggies and cut out the nuts, I don't have any crazy-uncomfortable bowel movements anymore, and no messy ones either.  (Sometimes I felt like a baby.  You know those adult baby wipes they sell?  Well, I never deigned to buy them, but yeah.)

So I'm a little confused as to what's really best for me to eat, but I've decided not to worry about it right now.  I need a vacation from the food sifting for a while.  Tonight I made a gluten-free, dairy-free pizza using Bob's Red Mill's pizza crust mix and Lisanatti's "mozzarella" "cheese" made from almonds (which really melts!).  It was so niiiiiice to eat like that.  I even put pepperoni on it, and then I died.