“Unremarkable”

is a medical term.

I discovered it while reading a copy of the discharge papers from my first major surgery. I was 18 and sitting at a restaurant with a family, who, with more compassion than I thought I deserved, had taken me in the months before I started college.  One member of that family happened to be a doctor.

When I saw that some surgeon had called my spleen "unremarkable," I scoffed and was offended on behalf of my spleen. It was then that the doctor of the fam explained to me that in medicine, the term meant that there was no discernable problem that the surgeon could see.

Almost a decade and a half later, this has stuck with me.  Prior to that surgery, I had spent my life abused and with the underlying symptoms of autoimmune diseases.  All of it went undetected, or "unremarkable," for years.  I felt then what I still feel now: an unending need to prove what I have faced, a plea as chronic as my conditions themselves, as beg for help and to be believed.

A few things have changed since that fateful dinner.  Well, actually, almost everything has, but notably, I have realized that I am not alone in feeling "unremarkable" to doctors, social workers, mandatory reporters, and even partners and friends. I've learned there’s a whole hoard of us out there fighting to be believed; so I am sharing my journey with the hope that at least one person will read it and feel seen.

So here we go. This is my story, my version of what it is like to fight for yourself, and to prove that you actually are, in fact, remarkable.