Photo by kaboompics
“You’re sick again?!”
“What do you have?”
“When will you be better?”
“Weren’t you just sick?”
They wanted me to be ‘productive’. They wanted me to have an illness they understood. They wanted me to be predictable, reliable — to be within the bounds of the expected number of times it’s appropriate for someone to be affected by a virus.
I was none of those things, and people really didn’t like it. All the folks who chose to spend their time with me — teachers, coworkers, bosses, my parents, new acquaintances, friends, lovers — suddenly weren’t so supportive when I got sick.
I didn’t have any acceptable answers for the questions they were asking.
“Yes, I’m sick again.”
“I don’t know, probably whatever is going around?”
“I don’t know. Maybe never.”
“Yeah, I was. It sucks.”
No one, including me, liked my answers, and I had no explanations. Whenever I went to the doctor, I went home with orders for rest, hydration, and a note that I was sick for those who needed it. It got to be so predictable, I stopped bothering to go to the doctor unless someone demanded a note.
This went on for many years. I told people that I had a weak immune system — probably extrapolated from something a doctor said whenever I pushed for an explanation beyond ‘viral illness’.
But ‘weak immune system’ is not a diagnosis.
My symptoms started when I was young. Year after year, I was disciplined at school for excessive absences. Aside from the ridiculousness of chastising a child for absences, this instilled in me a deep sense of shame. Getting punished meant that I had behaved badly, right? That I had made a choice and should make a different one next time… right??
As I got older, I tried just about everything I could think of, and everything others told me to try. I ate more vegetables, drank more water, took vitamins, got more exercise — I drank so much Yogi tea! I’d say I got more sleep, but I was already a champion sleeper.
Nothing worked; I just kept getting sick.
Throughout my life, whenever chronic illness held me outside the bounds of acceptable human frailty, I was made to feel that I was at fault:
“You should take better care of yourself.”
“You stay up too late.”
“You work too hard.”
“You party too hard.”
Yep, I was clearly responsible for feeling so poorly! At least, it seemed clear to just about everyone around me. They were handing out disdain like candy and I was eating it, internalizing it, and making the shaming of transient illness a part of my core belief system. And worse, I was passing it on to other people unintentionally: The classmate too sick to work on our class project? Slacker. The sick coworker who didn’t finish their part of the project on time? Shithead. The friend who was supposed to drive us to a show but couldn’t because they were sick? Asshole.
I wish I had questioned sooner the moral framing of illness as a personal failure. I certainly wish I had done so before I discovered I had a chronic illness. But it wasn’t until after I had an actual diagnosis that I thought to question any of it. Suddenly, I had a tangible reason for my frailty! I needed an outside reason to question the dominant narrative that sick people can simply choose not to be sick.
The insults people conjure up when they’re talking to others about someone who’s ill are especially ridiculous:
“They can’t be sick again?!”
“What are they doing to get sick so often?”
“If I could be here last week when I had that cough, they should be here now!”
“They’re ‘sick’ again. Okay, whatever.”
I’ve never been directly accused of lying about being sick, but I’ve heard it about others in whispers and gossip, so I must assume it’s been said about me, too. I’ve learned to assume that all the worst things I’ve heard people say to me are also said about me, because society believes that illness is an avoidable human frailty. The narrative seems to be: If a person is diligent, dedicated, and self-sacrificing enough, that can supersede the body’s biological requirements. If they do not succeed, they must be a slacker or a liar.
If I had stopped listening to everyone around me sooner, and questioned the belief that I was somehow responsible for my own illness, I am certain I would have pushed harder for a medical answer. I could have had answers and relief a decade sooner! I estimate that chronic illness negatively impacted my life for more than 20 years before my diagnosis. That’s 20 years of avoidable pain and exhaustion, because no one told me: “It’s not your fault.”
So, the next time you start thinking derogatory thoughts about someone else’s illness, shut that down! And if you can’t do that, shut your trap! And if you want to be an ally to the chronically-ill community, then don’t let it pass unanswered when you hear people handing out disdain candy over someone being sick.
And for fuck’s sake, stop telling us to drink Yogi tea! It’s gross and it won’t help!
