A Rosalind Lovelace series
Metaphors I Can’t Stand
The pictures people reach for to explain fibromyalgia, taken apart by the one who lives underneath them.
Seven short essays on the spoons, the fog, the broken volume knob, and the other metaphors that make a hard thing sound manageable.
The seven metaphors
- 01 The Spoon Economy Explained by Someone Who Is Always Broke A budget you can’t read, in a currency you can’t earn, at a store that never closes.
- 02 The Volume Knob Is Broken There is no knob. There is a whole panel of dials, and not one of them answers to me.
- 03 Fibro Fog Too pretty a word for the morning I walk into the kitchen and arrive holding a spoon, unsure why.
- 04 Rate Your Pain, One to Ten One to ten of what, measured how, on whose scale, and which number gets me believed without getting flagged.
- 05 But You Don’t Look Sick It arrives as a compliment and lands as an accusation. I look like someone who got very good at this.
- 06 Canceling Plans I am not canceling on you. I am reporting a closure I found out about the same time you did.
- 07 Your Tests Came Back Normal Normal means the test did not measure what is wrong with me. Unmeasured is a different country from healthy.
Not medical advice. One person’s reflections on living with fibromyalgia, told straight, by Rosalind Lovelace.