“Your Struggle is Officially Outlawed, Please Return All Struggles, that Aren’t Cancer, to Your Local Able-Body Authority Figure”
It’s pain ripping through your body,
Tearing out every last piece of you,
Like Cthulhu surfacing from the water, tearing a-part ships.
“At least it’s not cancer”
It’s forgetting how to spell your own name.
Desperately trying to decode your native language,
Like it’s a key to the treasure map of understanding the conversation you are having.
It’s struggling to read the book you have read fifty times before.
It’s your brain feeling like it took a summer swim in the local pool.
“It could be worse”
It’s a deep rooted exhaustion,
That you can feel in your bones,
Weighing you down like a lead vest.
It’s a tiredness that makes lifting your arms too exhausting.
“Some people have a worst illness and they still live their lives.”
It’s not being taken seriously,
Doctors refusing to treat you because you’re too young.
Wondering if the lack of treatment is going to cause permeant damage.
Wondering if you will be able to eat spicy foods,
Without your stomach imploding.
Wondering if you will every feel like your body isn’t at war with itself.
But at least you don’t have cancer, right?
We grieve the day when we were allowed to struggle.
YOU ARE READING
The Muddled Thoughts of the Chronically Ill
PoetryPoems about my struggle with chronic illness and how chronic illness is approached by society.
