“You have got to put fear in the passenger seat, boo.”

This is a phrase I heard time after time in my freshmen year ballet class at Connecticut College. What this meant to me then, however, is far from what it means to me now.  Then, not letting fear drive my life meant living away from home, branching out to go to that upper classman party, or volunteering to do a dance combination across the floor first.  All I can say is, I wish those were the things that I was still afraid of today… 

I’m sure my freshmen year ballet professor probably thought we were letting his advise go in one ear and out the other, but this phrase has stuck with me through my hardest times. Today, I face much more real, bigger, “scarier” problems. Today’s problems are the ones that truly force me to choose between letting fear drive my life, and remaining in complete control (or should I say at least letting myself feel like I am in control). The big problem I am facing now in life is that a week from Wednesday, I will be having surgery that will give me a permanent ileostomy.  For those of you who may not know what that is, the easiest way I can describe it to you in laymen’s terms would be to say “my insides will stick out of my belly and my stool will be emptied into a bag that surrounds that hole.” To say I’m petrified would be an understatement. Choosing this path was not easy.  Choosing this path is the epitome of what it means to put fear in the passenger seat.

Three years ago, I had a temporary ileostomy.  That was a piece of cake for me.  Got my colon removed, had a pouch for five months and I was feeling like a million bucks. When I got reconnected (small intestine to rectum), my body never got acquainted to having a shorter digestive track. The question then became more of a “so now what?” situation as I was fairly quickly exacerbating all my options. I went as far as Cleveland, Ohio to get treatment.  My body continued to fail me, and no one could figure out why.  This has gone on for 3 years.  Enough is enough.  It was now my turn to make the decision: get the permanent ileostomy, or suffer like I am currently; trying to go back on medications that made me look like an orange attached to a popsicle stick.  Most of you are probably thinking to yourselves right now, “she said it right up there.  She said she felt like a million bucks. It must be a no brainer to get the ileostomy.” WRONG.  Even though I felt great when I first had the ileostomy, something is very different this time.  This time it isn’t temporary.  This time it’s permanent. 

Making this decision was not easy for me.  I didn’t want to believe that this is what it had come to.  I knew that my options were running slim. I made the decision to have the surgery, and I am scared $h!+le$$ (literally and figuratively).  To be honest, for the past three years I had almost forgot about my time at Connecticut College.  It was filled with a lot of traumatic memories surrounding my illness. One example of this was when my roommate, on the first day of class, had to bring me a change of clothes to the bathroom because I had an accident due to my rectum being highly inflamed…It’s a good thing my roommate was quite possibly the nicest human to ever grace this Earth, but nonetheless, at this point in my life she was still a stranger.  If that doesn’t scream “shitty situation” I don’t know what will. 

Anyways, not soon after making the decision to get the permanent ileostomy, I was driving by myself, and I as I turned onto my road a thought popped into my head.  I heard the voice inside my mind say, “You have got to put fear in the passenger seat, boo.” At this moment I thought to myself, “what the heck?!?!?!?” I haven’t heard that phrase in years.  When I first heard the phase it didn’t hold much meaning to me. I loved my professor, and took every thing he said to heart, but at 18 I couldn’t put a handle on the phrase.  Now at 23 this has come to be my new mantra. The reality of my current satiation is: I know I need this surgery to feel like a million bucks again, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck.  I am afraid of so many things surrounding this decision.  I am afraid people will think its gross.  I am afraid I wont be able to follow some of my dreams, such as be a state titleholder in a pageant, or dance for my college team.  I am afraid I wont love my body, and I am afraid of the unknown complications that come with getting this procedure done so young.

Even with all these fears, I still know I am making the right decision.  When I heard this phrase in my head, I knew it popped into my mind for a specific reason.  Not only was it a sign that my time at Connecticut College had a larger influence on my life than I had thought it did, but also, it showed me I can choose just how afraid of this I want to be. After making this decision, and hearing this thought in my head, I started to do things I NEVER thought I would do. I took a plane, by myself, to see my boyfriend in Colorado.  I HATE planes.  HATE them. Something just came over me and I started to realize life is to short to act out of fear.  I had a wonderful trip to Colorado and got to enjoy the state and all its beauty.  I stopped living life in fear because I now believed I didn’t have to.  I allow myself to be scared, but I know that fear is NOT driving my decisions anymore. Before making the decision, and remembering this phrase, the Colorado trip would never have happened. I will never know why I remembered that phrase when I did, but I’m going to take it as a sign that the universe has my back during this hard time in my life.

I am so nervous for this procedure, but find peace in the words of my freshmen year ballet professor. I will NEVER be able to thank him enough for getting me through the hardest part of my life to date.  Without him, fear would still be my main girl, and not my side chick.