Someone once told me that I didn’t look sick enough. At the time, I was smiling in a photograph which appeared alongside a newspaper article about my health journey.
According to the keyboard warrior in question, sick people aren’t allowed to smile or blow dry their hair or colour coordinate their clothes etc Apparently it goes against society’s perceptions about how sick people should look, speak or behave.
Recently I was interviewed for the online publication, The Grace Tales. When I was asked to supply a recent photo of myself, at first I wasn’t sure what to do.
I really wanted to take a ‘nice’ photo of myself. A photo that looked … how can I put it, less like the horrible physical pain I was feeling on the inside. No easy feat I’m afraid.
These 2 photos were taken barely a minute apart and show the reality of living with chronic illness and managing all
kinds of symptoms while still desperately trying to feel like a ‘regular’ person.
Chronic illness can often dictate what one can and can’t do in life … but smiling in a photograph should never be decided by the opinions of others or strangers on the internet and should always be a choice that an individual makes for themselves.
“It’s difficult to describe exactly what it’s like living in a sealed room without human contact” – Amelia Hill On Living in Lockdown for Several Years
