But You Don’t Look Sick

Here’s one that nettles me from a writer’s angle, because the second I sit down to write anything about this life, anything at all, it shows up uninvited and parks itself in the doorway. But you don’t look sick. I can’t get a sentence going without it elbowing in, so fine, let me deal with it here, and then maybe it’ll let me work.

It isn’t even a question, which is part of the fun. It arrives dressed as a compliment and lands as an accusation. You look great, it says, and just underneath: so what’s the actual problem? It hands me the burden of proof in my own kitchen. Now I’m meant to defend being unwell to someone who’s smiling at me, and there’s no graceful way to manage it, because the better I look, the guiltier I apparently am.

The trouble is that looking sick is a performance I’m not putting on, and they’ve decided the performance is the proof. They want the costume. The pallor, the wince, the visible cane, the made-for-TV version of suffering. I didn’t bring the costume, so the part doesn’t read. Never mind that I got dressed and showed up precisely because today was a window, and I spent that window on being here. The effort that makes me look fine is the very effort I’ll pay for tomorrow, and it’s the same thing being filed as evidence against me.

From the desk, it’s worse, because it pre-edits everything I try to write. I’ll reach for an honest line about a rough afternoon and hear it straightaway: but you don’t look sick. So the line starts apologizing before it’s even finished. It hedges. It over-explains. It piles on proof like it’s filing a brief to a committee that’s already decided I’m faking. A whole essay can buckle under that imaginary doubter in the back row, and I’ve binned good true sentences because they didn’t show up armored enough to survive him.

So here’s what I’m doing about it, on the page and off. I’m going to stop writing to the doubter. No flashing the medical records in paragraph two, no proving I’m sick enough before I’m allowed to say a word. If I look fine to you, wonderful, that’s years of practice talking, and it has nothing to do with what’s happening underneath. You don’t get a costume. You get my word, which is exactly what I’d want to be enough if it were you.

But you don’t look sick. No. I look like someone who got very, very good at this. Those two aren’t the same thing, and I’m finally done explaining the difference before I’m allowed to start the real piece.