Woa--it's out there now

I just wanted to thank everyone for reading my blog and for all the comments people sent on facebook today. I appreciate people taking the time to read my story. I started having a, "Holy Crap, this personal stuff is actually 'out there' for anyone to look at now" kind of moment and got a little freaked out, but at the same time I'm really happy to be finally getting all of this off of my chest. I feel like this part of my life has been mostly kept a secret--the details of it anyway. I'm sure that anyone who has kept a secret for a long time (in my case, seventeen years) knows that that kind of thing starts to wear on you. My hope in blogging all of this is that I can feel like I'm living a more open life and not like I have to make up excuses for who I am, but to be truthful in all of it. I realized lately that as a defense mechanism to when people ask me "why are you so skinny?" I usually say, "Because I have Crohn's," and that usually shuts them up, or at least opens up the conversation to something not of criticism but of respect and understanding. I always feel kind of weird saying it, but I think that maybe it will teach people to think twice before judging someone before knowing them, no matter what their story.