mj

I think this metaphor was part of a feminism course, but its wider resonance has never left me. Its relevance to life often applies. Here and now, in the eyes of the doctor, I am just neurotic and self-obsessed. The more I do to be listened to as a human being, the more I strengthen my role as neurotic and self-obsessed. The less she listens to me the more I tell or show her that I'm suffering. The more I tell or show her I’m suffering the more she thinks I am neurotic and self-obsessed. Each time, my role is reinforced and my role overrides my humanity. I become less human in her eyes. I am a type. I annoy her and waste her time […].

No part of me wants to go to the doctor. I’ve come to dread it, to feel in it an absolute humiliation. I see her about insomnia as seldom as I can and when I go it is always for something specific; a prescription or, as before, a blood test. […] I wondered if it would be possible to have another blood test, I say. Everything I read about insomnia says you should rule out any underlying medical cause, and that hasn’t been done. I know it’s a long shot, but it would help me. Just to eliminate other causes would help me.

She turns to her computer and is silent. Finally, without any eye contact, she says, This is not a shop. […]

Rage and exhaustion are much the same sensation, I discover, a flame struggling out of the same dead fire. Anger is alive, energetic, object-oriented, but rage is what’s left, eating itself alive. Rage and exhaustion eat me alive. […] A lifetime of courting favours and having manners and asking nicely and never minding, never minding if the answer is no. »

me: idk man it still sounds like an ocular migraine