This was exactly why they'd failed: never being satisfied with what a person had to give, always expecting so much sacrifice that you had to hate yourself for anything less.

The body in pain is a deviant body that defies expectations, refuses the easy boxes of sick and well.

Empathy is an act of the imagination that grows from a gut-twinge of sympathy, a notion that I would not like to feel what that poor other person is feeling. We override our own flinching instinct to ask what another person's suffering might feel like.

I want to be better than my pain, but I cannot will my way through it. I have willed my way through so much pain in my life, and now I have come up against pain that is bigger than my will.

I should just ignore foodies as i ignore football, because both cultures have nothing to do with me - but the culture of saffron and creme fraiche gets under my skin. The competitiveness makes me feel insecure, and this weakness is the insecurity of a woman who can't quite believe that domestic goddessery is really not expected of her. (Right?)

I have tried and I enjoy yoga. But if you tell me to try yoga, then I will have to fight you. You will win, but I might nip at your jugular with my sharp incisors first.

I take opioids to treat chronic pain. Stigmatizing them will harm me.

Chronic pain patients like me are not the cause of the opioid crisis; only 22% of those who misuse opioids are prescribed them by a doctor, and only 13% of ER visits for opiate overdoses were chronic pain patients. Most chronic pain patients are rule-followers who just want to function.

I will be living with chronic pain for the rest of my life. I don’t have the mobility, energy or life options I used to have. I work hard to manage the pain, and I want the medical system to be a respectful and effective partner, not a jailer. The opioid crisis is not my doing.

Desire and love have to grapple first with reconstituting themselves in a body that has been altered to its core.