It seems important to cling to the concrete, to remember that illness is not a metaphor or a study but a phenomenon unfolding in {and on} real bodies in real rooms. Its qualia, the crinkly paper hospital gown and metallic adrenaline taste, the mutable and inexpressible shades of pain, demand articulation because they matter. We work so hard at telling others what it is like to be sick in whichever particular way we are sick; we are reassured to hear that our particulars fit within larger known narratives of illness. With sickness as with anything else, communicating what it is like so others can know, or understanding others in precisely the way they wish we could, is next to impossible. We try anyway.
( Jonathan Franzen )
[ The Best American Essays 2016 ]
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