what does the body mean?

Sickness

There are a lot of good metaphors for sickness. You could call it a parasite, a shadow, a doorway—all of these things make sense, metaphorically and literally, in their own way, but none of them come close to the long dark. The real thing, the wolf of Wall Street, the head honcho. Chronic sickness is an aggressive malaise. It is the dust between the keys in your keyboard; it is the mist that hangs fog in your window before the morning commute to work. Fighting it is as futile as grasping the air, desperately trying to catch the ichorous black dots permeating it after a hard sneeze.

That’s the difference between a good metaphor and a great metaphor. Sickness is a parasite, but chronic sickness is the king of a one-horse town. It can last for centuries, passed down for generations, or it can sprout a seed and grow in anyone. Like an irregularity in the sidewalk occupied by a lecherous weed, chronic sickness tries to colonize you.

At first, it feels like a cold. Just a simple cold—you don’t realize how quickly a cold can disable the joy in your life until you have one. The memory of being healthy feels like a far-off oasis from your bed-prison, discarded Kleenex and half-empty pill bottles adorning your cell. A cold sucks, but it’s something you can work through. Something to be defeated.

Succumbing to a cold feels impossible in 2026. Actually, there’s no cure for the common cold. Did you know that? Even with a man on the moon, we haven’t managed to defeat one of the simplest, most basic mechanisms of disease. It still spreads like a cancer, cursing doomed kindergarten classes and night nurses alike to a lifetime of sniffling woundedness. Without a cure, all of our medications are just simpering platitudes. They reflect like cheap glitter in the illuminating light of the infection; they merely manage the symptoms, never coming close to disabling the DNA of the cold. Never conquering it. Not like it conquers us.

I think a lot about the meaning of words. “Having a cold—“ where does that come from? Researching the etymology itself doesn’t do it for me; I prefer to speculate, and draw my own conclusions. That being said, I find it very fitting that being afflicted with the world’s most manageable incurable disease is called “having a cold.” This is because of its simplicity and implied context. Having a cold and being cold are both simple, self-explanatory, and ancient aspects of the human condition. We have developed adequate and even miraculous solutions to both problems; this type of advancement, however, is predicated by human forgetfulness.

It is easy to forget that the common cold, as well as its bitter meteorological counterpart, have wiped out entire populations of our ancestors. The cold needs no introduction. Hundreds of thousands of songs have been composed in their respective honors—even more diary entries, text messages, letters, phone calls, and conversations chronicle their persistent, draining nature. When considering this, we might recall that the common cold is named for the winter because it is one of the most insidious things in nature.

There is no cure. We can build all the false idols we want, but nothing we prop up against it will ever kill the common cold. This is the tip of the iceberg.

You may now be able to comprehend the vague shape, a hint of the scope, but never the full body of the monster. Chronic illness cannot be explained. Not through any lens other than its purest form. But at first, it felt like a cold.

Then, over the course of two or maybe three years, it owned my life. Three years felt impossible to a 19 year old. It still feels impossible to me now. I’m not old enough yet for the passage of time to register as anything other than a novelty, a slow molasses dictating the pace at which I will die. I made peace with it once, but with the added clarity of hindsight, I see the past with a renewed sense of impassable rage. Did I do this to myself at 18? Did I do this to myself at 21? I should have eaten better, gone to the gym, been less affected by poverty, been less affected by trauma, been less affected by the U.S. government… the list goes on and on. Did I do this? Did I build this world? Did I make myself sick?

It’s possible. I’ve lived a reckless life permeated by many wounds, and I haven’t had a lot of time to rest. I think about how diamonds are formed under pressure. Would a half-formed diamond suddenly crack, splinter into smithereens, if the stone around it suddenly vanished? If the lava and rocks were gone, would the lack of pressure destroy the stone? Maybe now that my body has some time to catch up, the illness is bearing down on me like the final hit in a boss fight. Me vs. God, or the world, or lupus, or type 1 diabetes. What do I even have, anyway?

It starts with Ehlers-Danlos, a disorder I was definitely born with and probably won’t be diagnosed with. I’ve always had trouble walking, but is that…sickness? Really? The constant ache and stab of nerve and bone pain is daunting, but it doesn’t have anything on the lingerig malaise. The devil I know has been weakened by years of exponential endurance—but the devil I don’t? The whistle in the wind?

At first it was a cold that just wouldn’t go away. I thought it was nothing, just the perfect virus, a real dead-ringer for my microbiome. The perfect genetic jigsaw piece. Then, as the months passed, I started to feel worse and worse and wonder more and more. I became curious as to why I’d never been hungry as an adult—a curiosity that deepened when food began to cause me pain. Serious pain, like nausea I’ve never had before.

Eating and drinking became a special kind of chore to me. It’s like doing the dishes at your first job as a teenager—of course you understand dishes, but it’s not like anyone ever showed you around a 3 compartment sink. All of a sudden—why can’t I drink water? What is this mysterious illusion? It’s a simple cup of water, just water, from the tap like it always is. Why can’t I finish the cup? Why can’t I finish a sip?

I started losing energy, a gentle wither at first, sapping my strength like an old friend. I took naps during the day for the first time since childhood. I began to lose motivation to shower, clean, and take care of myself, which was already difficult with chronic pain. For months, I blamed myself.. The months turned into years. I lost all faith, and the negative headspace became a separate illness all its own. Then, all at once, just as I was beginning to feel like it was all in my head… I lost fifteen pounds in 3 weeks, an amount so quick and drastic that it was recommended I screen for cancer.

It didn’t stop there (how could it?). My hair began to fall out in clumps; I stopped drinking and eating almost entirely, and sleeping too. Every morning this week, I’ve awoken with fistfuls of blood in my mouth, my gums leaking my life out into the world like the punctured fabric of an above-ground pool. I can’t get through a shift at work without falling asleep at the wheel. I can’t even get through a shift on the farm in Stardew Valley. My body is marred by invisible burns and pricks, phantom sensations making every movement a gamble. Each time I stand, let alone walk, my legs quiver with new weakness. It feels like I was reincarnated with all my memories and traits, a ready-to-go human boy, parts included, but without the basic instructions. How can I move my legs? How can I eat?

There is some hope for me yet, despite the fact that I haven’t quite gotten the hang of health insurance. My girlfriend’s aunt is a nurse—shoutout community, am I right?—-and was able to give me the first decent diagnosis I’ve ever had. Malnutrition. Malnutrition? Malnutrition? What? How could it possibly be malnutrition? This plague on my life that’s eaten my heart and hands, the monster that is devouring me, the great nameless, formless beast that haunts the halls of my home, my devil, my hell…. Malnutrition? Seriously?

I couldnt help but feel that my worst insecurities had been confirmed. Just as I’d suspected, it had been my fault all along! If I could have just saved that last $20, paid rent late that one time, borrowed that extra money from my savings, or foregone that last iced coffee… Maybe I could have healed myself. It was only in my self-deprecating pit that I discovered the obvious truth hidden within the hardship: I am, and have always been, a victim of the circumstances set before me. Before, this option felt inconceivable; of course I alone am immune to structural instability within society; of course I alone will not be affected by the crashing economy; I alone, of course, will not suffer the burden of substantial pressure from existential forces; I, like everyone, believed I was immune.

Beaten down by poverty, I unintentionally skipped meals, relying almost exclusively on fast and canned food. Even with a minimum-wage job, the pressures of life closed in on me, and my body adjusted. I can’t quite remember when my hunger cues left. Was it the first time I was homeless? The second? Was it when I got laid off, or when I was fired (for being transgender, of course)? Ultimately, I have no idea. This goes to show, however, that the morose American tendency to reject the personal application of societal unrest is deeply harmful. While the realization has, of course, stifled me with guilt and shame, it’s also opened the door to a new window of healing I didn’t know I needed.

Pain feeds pain. In experiencing the sickness that was imposed upon me, I experienced the pain imposed upon this world. The privilege of blindness had been thoroughly stripped from me, and I moved through life as a vagabond in an industrial wasteland. I felt that there was no hope under the capitalist system, and that I’d be doomed to die with the same afflictions that burden me today. This was until I started birdwatching.

Sickness breeds resentment, but also familiarity. As I watched the world pass me by, I felt a shudder move through me. It was like the wool lifted from my eyes. Despite my suffering, life persisted around me in beautiful and fascinating ways previously unclear to me. The birds I saw revealed connection, empathy, and feeling I’d never have predicted from an animal. They have families, hearts, and minds, and because of them I soon began to watch other creatures.

Every single blade of grass is part of a branching superorganism, stretching miles and intercommunicating the whole way. If the grass began to brown in places, growing patchy, covered in weeds, would it blame itself? I don’t think so. The natural world doesn’t tear itself apart over pollution or pesticides; it simply perseveres, coming out twice as strong for it. Any any infestation in a Philly rowhome will tell you that.

So, I guess that’s it. There’s no grand ending. It’s just my body. I hope you like it? I guess that’s weird to say too. Maybe someday, it’ll just feel like a cold again.

Thanks for reading, Sy

thank you to the maker of this template