I can’t tell which part of my body is the main problem anymore.

Maybe there isn’t one.

Maybe it’s my brain. Maybe it’s neurodivergence. Maybe it’s my endocrine system and the complicated relationship between the brain, hormones, stress, and the rest of the body. Maybe it’s genetics, trauma, lifestyle, illness, or some combination of all of them.

I don’t know.

What I do know is that I absolutely hate living in a body that constantly seems to be fighting against me.

Before I go any further, I need to make something clear: I am not a medical professional. I am writing about my personal experiences and the connections I have wondered about—particularly regarding my pituitary adenoma. I don’t know which of my symptoms are actually caused by it, and I don’t want my experiences mistaken for medical advice.

But these are the questions I live with.

The migraines. The anxiety. The endless pain. The organs that seem to take turns malfunctioning. The emotional uncertainty. The reactions that sometimes feel completely disproportionate to everyday situations. The hormonal imbalances that seem capable of affecting everything.

And that’s only the beginning.

The Migraines

I have dealt with migraines since puberty.

For most of my life, I attributed them to stress—and honestly, considering my life, stress wasn’t an unreasonable explanation.

I have never been a lie on the beach while all my bills are paid and everything will work itself out kind of person.

My life has been more like:

Take care of everyone else. Handle the emergency. Fix the problem. Keep moving. And if there is any energy left at the end, try to keep yourself alive too.

I’ve spent more nights crashing at the end of the day and more mornings barely able to drag myself out of bed than I care to admit.

The Anxiety

My anxiety has roots that go much deeper than adulthood.

After a fire destroyed things my mother considered precious—pictures, documents, memories—I became the person she blamed.

What stayed with me wasn’t simply losing things in a fire. It was growing up believing that the things beside her mattered more than the person standing in front of her.

I carried the feeling that she would rather have lost me than lost those possessions.

And I was reminded of it for much of my life, right up until she died.

What does something like that do to a child’s nervous system?

What does it do when that child becomes an adult?

I don’t know exactly.

But I know it leaves something behind.

The Pain

Then there is the endless pain—physical and emotional.

I experience empathy intensely.

If I see the scar from a bullet wound, my brain immediately tries to imagine the injury beneath it. I cannot truly know what that person experienced, but my mind tries to reconstruct it: how the body was damaged, how much it must have hurt, how terrifying it might have been.

Then, if the person tells me the story, I find myself imagining both the physical and emotional pain simultaneously.

Sometimes empathy feels less like a gift and more like a curse.

I cannot imagine knowingly causing that kind of pain to another living being.

Even squishing a bug hurts my heart.

The Body That Keeps Breaking

My relationship with my body has been complicated for a very long time.

When I was 12, I had my tonsils removed. I overheard as my mother was told by my doctor that during the procedure my heart completely stopped for at least approximately thirty seconds.

When I woke up, something inside me had changed.

I knew Christianity wasn’t my spiritual path.

My mother allowed me to search for my own spiritual journey, and for that freedom I will always be grateful.

But that surgery was only the beginning of my complicated medical history.

Over the years, my gallbladder was removed.

My stomach was surgically altered.

My ovaries were covered in cysts.

My uterus developed scar tissue after an IUD punctured it.

My liver became fatty. As that improved, cysts were found.

My pancreas stopped functioning properly.

The first section of my intestines began moving things in the wrong direction.

My thyroid developed a cyst.

And then there is the adenoma sitting at my pituitary gland—the tiny structure at the base of the brain with an enormous job in regulating hormones throughout the body.

Sometimes it feels like my organs are taking turns raising their hands and saying:

My turn.

Even hygiene has become something I struggle with. I can shower, change products, change what I eat, and try everything I can think of—and still feel like my body smells wrong.

My blood pressure has dropped dangerously low.

I’ve experienced terrifying problems involving my heart.

And sometimes my own brain doesn’t feel trustworthy.

When Life and My Brain Collide

There have been times when something outside my control happened and my reaction didn’t feel like me.

But those reactions didn’t happen in a vacuum.

I watched a boss embezzle more than $300,000 from a business.

My brother died from blood clots at 40.

The man I had built a life with succumbed to his addictions and the fantasy he had created.

My body was falling apart, and I felt like nobody was there for me.

Then my mother died.

I was in therapy through many of these experiences, but therapy doesn’t magically remove the circumstances you’re living through.

At the same time, I was living in a house where every spare penny and almost every ounce of my energy went toward fixing something.

I was caring for four children.

Three dogs.

A household.

A relationship.

And a man who had expectations of me while showing very little interest in returning the affection I desperately needed.

I kept going.

Because that is what I have always done.

And Here I Am Again

Now I look at my life and feel like I’m watching the same story repeat itself from a different pedestal.

The circumstances have changed.

The scenery has changed.

I’ve changed.

And yet somehow I recognize the choices.

I recognize the patterns.

I recognize the woman who keeps putting herself last until there is barely anything left of her.

There was a time when I exercised almost every day.

I drank water.

I prioritized healthier food.

I enjoyed taking care of myself.

Self-care wasn’t another obligation. It was something I actually wanted to do.

Now I’m sleeping more than I think I should.

I’m hurting more than I want to.

I’m taking more medication than I feel is helping.

And the one thing I can say with certainty is this:

Something has to change.

I need to make major changes in the way I live if I want to give this body the best chance I can.

Because right now, I feel lost.

I feel broken.

I feel like there is nobody I can truly count on.

Sometimes my mind goes all the way to the darkest conclusion: that I am going to die alone and that death will finally mean I am no longer in pain.

And then come the questions.

How much of this is connected to the adenoma?

How much comes from a lifetime of stress?

How much is generational trauma—the pain passed from one person to another until somebody finally decides they don’t want to keep handing it down?

How much is genetics?

How much is my environment?

How much is simply the accumulated weight of everything my body has survived?

I don’t have those answers yet.

Maybe some of them will eventually come from doctors.

Maybe some will come from therapy.

Maybe some will come from changing the way I treat my body.

And maybe some questions will never have clean answers.

There are days when I want to give up.

There are days when living inside this body feels like an exhausting battle I never volunteered to fight.

Today is not that day.

Today, I am still here.

And for today, that is enough.