See My Suffering? Please Make It Matter.

There are two versions of myself sitting inside the hospital room.

There is the version that is hopeful that hospitals are a place for healing and taking steps forward, and there is the version that knows I could stay on top of my meds, preserve dignity, actually rest in darkened rooms, not put on a face to be as pleasant as possible to receive equitable care, and not have words put in my mouth too.

Not by just anyone, of course… but doctors in training or with something to prove, sometimes; Often.

I went in for a couple of days hoping for two outcomes. Duel et duality. “Either we monitor the starvation tactic safely so I’m not suffering alone like usual, and thus maybe even speed up the process,” I said to the doctors who listen (not all of them, but they exist, and we need them), “Or to gather more data on why this keeps happening and maybe take a step forward”.

The first time I felt the “pancreatitis like” pain, distention and vomiting, I was in New York on a dance gig and became so sick I had to be driven back to our state, taken to the local hospital, ambulance’d to my specialty hospital, and was jaundice and had an illeus by the time I got there.

Since then, I get these “attacks” multiple times per year, a couple months apart. They last over a week (often much longer), and the week after the pain goes away is depleted and uncomfortable. I’ve rarely ever gone to the hospital since the initial stay, because there is very little consistent protocol for pancreatitis. “Go to the ER,” the specialist says; “See a specialist,” says the ER.

If I could paint like Frida, I wouldn’t post selfish selfies such as these, by the way. Drawn faces not drawn in oil and Masonite. Rather, slapdash seconds of something that is meaningless, sure, but also a diary diuretic of what it means to live this life, in this body, at this time; two in one.

People hate people who share their life.

They hate them even more when it’s blood and culture wars; hospitals gowns and gauze.

People hate people who share their life… but no one hates being the face in these selfies, at times like these…

More than the person suffering.

We don’t post them to say “look at me, even though we are. We post them to say: “This is my life”, the same as a vacation photo or graduation. “This is what I did this week”… and yet, beneath the oil and Masonite I whisper:

“See my suffering? Please make it matter. Please let it exist just as any other portrait would. I can’t change the way it is…

But one day… I want someone to remember how it was.”

Share, Like, Restack in Notes, Forward to a Friend, Post on your Socials: All love is… well, more love going into the world!

(And if I can ever help YOU, let’s keep our karma paying forward and forward. So reach out?)