We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.

by Samantha Irby

Million-Dollar Mermaid A solid 75 percent of the time I am awake, I am in pain akin to that of childbirth. Sometimes you can read the excruciating discomfort on my face, but I’ve gotten really good at masking it so that it just looks like I’m stifling an unpleasant bit of gas. People are always asking me what Crohn’s feels like, and my answer is this: it’s like a compact car is trying to drive through my small intestines, all the time. Seriously, and it doesn’t matter if I eat or don’t eat or whatever. Oh, here’s something fun—I don’t care what diet you’re on or what herbal supplements you take. If they work for you, I’m happy. I don’t know if it’s something about me, or if people walk around just dispensing unfounded medical advice to everyone they’ve ever met with a health issue, but more often than I’m comfortable with, some asshole with a high school diploma wants to sit me down and talk at me about how they can cure my wretched-gut disease. There’s always some bag of dicks with a beer in his hand, a triple cheeseburger on his plate, and a cigarette in his mouth trying to talk to me about healthy eating. And with zero trace of irony! I appreciate the effort, I really do, but this shit is autoimmune and I have a gastroenterologist. If all I had to do was put down this taco and take those herbs your grandma swears by, I’d already be cured. Thanks, though.