chronic illness
The October Slide: Managing Symptom Flare-Ups in the Fall | The EDS Clinic
eds.clinic
Trusting in the inherent safety of my life is new. I have spent a long time secretly believing that I will only be safe if I am perpetually extraordinary in some way. It is the protective shield that many of us with a disability reach for. To be always unwell is to be judged. It can quickly feel like the only way free of that judgement is to try to... See more
What if... it's safe for me to stop?
To become chronically ill is not only to have a disease that you have to manage, but to have a new story about yourself, a story that many people refuse to hear—because it is deeply unsatisfying, full of fits and starts, anger, resentment, chasms of unruly need.
Meghan O'Rourke • The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness
To be sick in this way is to have the unpleasant feeling that you are impersonating yourself. When you’re sick, the act of living is more act than living.
Meghan O'Rourke • The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness
in my fatigue and pain I couldn’t find the words to make myself legible to others. (And I still have not found them. This text is full of silences and vagueness and lacunae: when I write “brain fog,” I imagine that your mind slides over the idea, unless you, too, have suffered from it.)