Your sick day is my every day

Very rarely am I actually fine because I have multiple chronic illnesses. I suppose I’m always a version of fine when I’m feeling normally, but “fine” is a lot of being in pain. But the times that it’s a tolerable pain, I’m good! Which is a version of everywoman’s fine, I suppose. 

But this whole unfortunate situation that is my life means that I am very frequently telling people I am fine when I am not. I can put myself back in those moments easily. There are many. The most potent of which happen at work. 

Professional acquaintances are not interested in how you actually are. When you pass Sue in the skyway, she is asking how you are as a courtesy. She does not want to hear that you are very bad. She does not want to hear that someone is slicing open your forehead with a serrated knife and sliding a rugged brick inside. Sue would like to keep walking to hit her 10,000 steps without interruption. 

On a day and in a situation just like the one described above I was feeling particularly lousy. Not only was I battling a brutally painful daily headache, but my generalized anxiety had inhabited my brain so securely that I no longer knew where it ended and where I began. I had just wrapped up an acute panic attack, suffered in a sound-proof, translucent phone booth placed in the center of our open office space for “privacy.” The attack involved aggressive chest pain, numb extremities, blurred vision, and hysterics. Nope, not describing a stroke! Just your run of the mill mental illness. I had just emerged from the see-through privacy booth and I was very clearly not fine. 

Eyes bloodshot, hands shaking, mascara streaked down to my chin. I walked through our office looking like this. I passed by several colleagues looking this way. One did not look up from his phone. Another glanced up and delivered a head nod. The third looked directly in my eyes and therefore saw my eyes, but simply smiled and walked on. 

Tamara was the fourth co-worker I passed. She looked at me, recognized the universal symptoms of human despair and asked, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine!” I squeaked out, flashing my signature grin. 

Then I promptly went to my desk, packed up my things, and drove to my sister’s apartment, where I had my second panic attack of the day. 

I was very fine and good!

You should know that I only lie if I’m in an objectively dangerous situation. Or if I’m feeling uncomfortable. Or if I am trying to avoid feeling uncomfortable. Or if there are some Mary-Kate and Ashley Barbie™ dolls that I really want and I suspect you bought them for my birthday, but I need to know for sure. 

I suppose this was a time that I was avoiding feeling uncomfortable. Because here’s the thing about chronic illness: Regular people don’t get it. They can’t get it. Their context for “illness” is a cold. The flu. Cancer. Even if a common illness is deemed “severe,” it’s still somewhat acute. There’s a beginning and an end even if the end is death. For most people, illness makes sense. You get something, you do something to make it go away, you wait, it goes away, and you’re regular again. Or, you follow those steps, nothing helps, and the something that you got kills you. That is terrible and I empathize with the injustice of it, but the silver lining is that there’s a distinct end. 

Chronic illness does not end. It usually has a distinguishable beginning, but then it plagues you forever. 

I will say that regulars do get the “illness” part of chronic illness. You’ve had a headache. Your muscles have been sore after a work out. You’ve probably thrown up. And that’s the empathy I usually get, and that empathy is kind and well-intentioned and mightily unhelpful. I appreciate that you try. But the headache that you once had that time you were hungover is not the same as the headache I’ve had since I was seven. The migraines I get on the weekly are not the same as your sister’s hair stylist’s husband who cured his through “hydration.” (This is a real story! Someone told me that if I just drank more water throughout the day, I’d cure my headaches. THIS IS BRAND NEW INFORMATION THAT I HAVE NEVER HEARD OR THOUGHT ABOUT BEFORE.)

And all of that is why I said I was fine. Because explaining how I actually am the number of times I am less than fine is not worth the trouble. When I tell you the truth, I hurt both you and me. You feel so badly that I’m suffering this unimaginable daily fate and I feel terribly for making you feel bad for me. Telling the truth typically results in me comforting you about my chronic illness. Trust me: Neither of us wants that. 

And though I’m saying it’s all about both of us, I do think it’s slightly more about me. See, when I tell you the truth, I also hear the truth. I hear how I’m truly, actually, physically feeling in a particular moment. I hear how you feel about that truth, and it reminds me that my truth is a minority. It reminds me that there are people, most people, who don’t have to live like this. It reminds me that my normal is other people’s sick day. My normal is quite literally unfathomable, ungraspable, for many. It can’t even be full imagined for a moment. 

That’s devastating. 

And I’m not someone who can endure that kind of devastation multiple times every single day. That’s the kind of devastation that swallows you whole and ensures you have no capacity for anything else. 

So, I stand by my lie. My lie is a healthy coping mechanism. My lie supports my survival. I never wish I said anything different, and I’m not interested in where my honesty may have led.