Visible Healing Invites Annoying Questions
What happened?
I fell down the stairs.
How did this happen?
I missed a stair.
What’s wrong with your….?
I sprained my ankle.
Visible Healing Invites Assurance
That must hurt.
It’s not too bad.
I’m so sorry.
I’m fine!
You poor thing.
Really, I’m fine!
There is some perfect storm chaos in our society surrounding an injury that is visible and visibly not permanent. What do I mean by that?
Visible and visibly not permanent:
a cast (versus a prosthetic)
an eye patch (versus a glass eye)
crutches (versus a wheelchair)
I’m thinking about a recent Modern Love essay about dating, written by a woman with a prosthetic leg. It goes without saying - this account is of one woman’s experience and I don’t presume to speak for others. I have never asked someone why he has one hand, or why she uses a wheelchair. I’ve been conditioned that these inquiries are “rude,” or always, “none of my business.” Maybe you’ve felt this way before, too? I question my reliance on avoidance, especially in comparison to my impulse to address any sign of injury that presents as temporary.
When someone I meet with weekly joined a Zoom meeting wearing a black eye patch, I blurted out, “What happened?” A knee-jerk reaction. Did I care what happened? Why did I need to know? If she had shaved her head, would I ask why?
***
A man passes me on the street, what happened to your foot?! He is a stranger. Without my walking boot, I doubt he would have acknowledged me at all. Why now?
I wonder, first, if others feel entitled to the narrative of my physical body because I’m a woman. Historically and today, women have been delicate, desired objects. My clunky plastic cast disrupts this assumption. Men with injuries — do you feel as ogled as I do?
A physical injury, on whatever scale, is a form of trauma. People won’t stop poking at my trauma, maybe because the visibility of it makes them so uncomfortable. Like an itch you gotta scratch.
What if all trauma was explicitly visible to others, even strangers? Would we be forced, over and over, to make sense of it to others? Would we take more care? Feel more empathy?
While I ruminate, I receive a push notification that Simone Biles withdrew herself from competition in the Tokyo Olympics. When I watch the coverage later, I feel irked as reporter’s press her to admit a physical injury. Is it not enough to just not be okay?
Several times, I’ve considered turning LR into a paid subscription. Each week, I take time to share part of myself. What I see, or read, or obsess over. Since I began this project six years ago, I’ve sent enough newsletters to fill a book (literally).
So from now on, I’ll leave this button down here as a tip jar. If you enjoy Lucky Rigatoni, please consider making a one-time or recurring donation by clicking the button below. Thank you for reading.