Back to The Defiant Few ←Not Everything I’m Angry About Is a Symptom.
The world is comfortable with sick people until our honesty stops being pleasant; then suddenly the disease is not the problem—our attitude is.
People are surprisingly comfortable with illness as long as the sick person remains pleasant. We can limp, tremble, freeze, tire, adapt and lose entire pieces of our lives, provided we narrate the experience calmly and thank everyone for their concern. The body may malfunction. The attitude is expected to remain under warranty.
Then anger enters the room, and suddenly the disease is no longer the urgent problem. We are. The emotion becomes evidence that we are bitter, unstable, ungrateful, not coping well or allowing the diagnosis to define us. Apparently, suffering is medically understandable until it develops an opinion.