The pain continues.
It roars, sours, pours.
A soundless scream that deathens.
It reckons.
Day four in a row and the pain still hasn’t settled. I’m supposed to be on holiday, but it’s overshadowing everything I do. It hides in the alleys of my body, always just out of sight, waiting to pounce the moment I try to forget it’s there. Stuck in a juggling act of trying to keep my mobility up whilst not overexerting – and I’m the lucky one, it could be worse…
I’m stuck in a constant juggling act: trying to keep my mobility up without overexerting, walking the tightrope between doing too much and not enough. Every choice feels like a gamble, a delicate balance between freedom and flare-up. And yet I remind myself — I’m one of the lucky ones. It could be worse…
I carry on. This week marks the first week of my dissertation. The goal — complete before September. Why? I’m crazy… At least no longer of the stir variety.
I write this from a beautiful house in Chicago, on what has become the world’s longest trip to visit a library I still haven’t managed to enter — despite having been here nearly two weeks. I’ve compensated by buying and reading far too many books, trying to patch the intellectual longing with whatever attention I can muster. But even that’s fraying. My concentration is diluted by a liberal concoction of medications and their delightful buffet of side effects. It’s surreal: surrounded by ideas, architecture, and the illusion of adventure, while my body insists on making every step feel like resistance. I’m here. But not fully. Not freely.
So far, my focus in the first chapter has shifted, from cloud-gazing with Aristophanes in Clouds to the spirited, embodied strike of Lysistrata. I didn’t expect that, when starting a philosophy degree, I’d end up analysing a mythical sex strike — yet Lysistrata makes it impossible to ignore how laughter, embodiment and defiance converge as tools of resistance. Much like my present predicament, a healthy mix of laughter and defiance finds a way toward progress.