Thread by @empathywarrior

I had such a great morning, then didn't realize how badly I was overheating in a shower, and just spent two hours out cold in my bed. I'm downing a ton of salt now. I think...I think this is the hardest part of chronic illness. Every day can be so unpredictable. #Dysautonomia

As I said to some folks in this morning's writing group, I'm re-learning to write in a sustained fashion when my health is worse than it was 6 years ago, when I was writing my dissertation. I still wrongly assume my baseline is "healthy" rather than "presently symptom-free."

I love the illusion of cure, and I won't say my attachments to it are entirely maladaptive. In a good run of days, sometimes weeks, I could really believe that the new roofing or the re-tiled hallway of the house that is my body somehow negates the slowly crumbling foundation.

I keep thinking about Susan Sontag talking about "dual citizenship" in the "kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick," but what I always fail to take into account is that sometimes I can be in these two places at once.

I mean also, abolish all monarchies and all borders! (Which is also to say, how lovely it would be to live in a world that was accessible and not ableist and in which I could roam freely between sickness and "wellness" without having to be terrified about present and my future.)