What does it mean to be Sick?
Is it what we feel, or what others tell us?
~
Sex, Drugs & Endometriosis is an evolving collection of experiences for other sick humans like me - I know you’re out there. We’ve gotta stick together.
What does it mean to be sick? To be human? Sexy?
I’ve spent so much of my life at this intersection: being told what it means while experiencing something completely different; being told I’m not when my body tells a different story; watching my relationships, career, self-worth cruise by on a flying bicycle I’ll never learn to ride.
To me being sick always meant being a failure. Not being able to honour commitments, never understanding why I’d dread making any sort of plans at all, losing my sense of self as a sexual, worthy, or average-ly healthy human being.
In high school, I can remember flooding periods, vicelike menstrual cramps, piercing pelvic pain, throwing up in the bathroom, or sometimes getting so lightheaded I’d black out. The Pill fixed that for a while, until it didn’t really. Then I dealt with overwhelming urges to stop existing, migraines with auras a shroom enthusiast could only dream of, and nausea that made me call in sick job after job after job.
I was continually convinced I was dying. I think two decades of suicidal ideation comes partly from a place of wanting to have control over it. Dying. If chest pain and panic attacks were gonna make me blackout working at a restaurant, having sex in the shower (that happened), or commuting on the subway (where no one can reach me, no one knows where I am, and everyone is in their own headphone-book-device cocoon) — then I want to have control. I need to have control. I want to decide when I go. I’m just glad that the four times I did decide I wanted to go, I quickly chickened out because I didn’t want people to have to deal with all of my stuff when I die. (I am a maximalist, blame my parents. I love you).
I’m still here.
And being sick is still fucking hard. Our medical (and every other) system is a cisheteropatriarchy (Google it) that is modeled after and designed for the all-powerful White Man. Women and other AFAB (assigned female at birth) people are systematically left out and discriminated against. Most of “modern” gynaecology exists today thanks to horrific, sometimes fatal procedures performed on Black women in the 19th century without consent or anaesthesia. Trans, nonbinary, and other gender-diverse folks are repeatedly discriminated against and gaslighted by the medical institution — and that’s if they even feel safe coming out in that environment.
Sick humans have to place so much trust in people and systems that fundamentally don’t understand them. Forget it if you’re unhoused, living in poverty, a person of colour, disabled. Society doesn’t believe they deserve to exist; if you’re not contributing to society by working then what is your purpose on this earth?
Being sick is part of my identity. It’s impossible for it not to be. I don’t want to pretend, to ‘not look sick,’ like it’s some sort of accomplishment to slap on some pink eyeliner and a great thrifted jacket to go to the grocery store because I’ve been in bed for 12 days and need to feel something, anything.
Sexually adventurous and queer folks are often called ‘sick,’ simply for existing outside the normative realm of hetero monogamy and perpetuating the species. If you can’t perpetuate, you’re looked down upon. If you choose not to, you’re looked down upon. Unsurprisingly, outside this normative realm is where the greatest potential for growth exists, opportunities to feel something that isn’t chronic pain or a world telling you that you shouldn’t exist, or —gasp!— pleasure!
This little baby of mine (because I’ll never have a human baby), these words I made with my own brain are for all of the other sick humans who sometimes just need to feel something, or to find community, or read a totally explicit story with some real human insecurities attached. Whatever it is, we’re in it together, remember?
Whether your sick means chronically ill, mentally and morally deranged, a passing plague, or a literal menstruating human (because language exists to pathologize us) — or you’re still figuring it out, there just might be something in here for you.
Sidebar: I definitely won’t always have cool graphics like this. Are they even cool? Idk. I’ll mostly just have words. Maybe some retro pics, except I recently spent three weeks at home with my folks and didn’t look through a single photo album. Who knows. Half the fun in signing up is not knowing what’s coming next, right?
Don’t forget to tell all of your sick friends …
~ xx
What does being a sick human mean to you?