The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness

by Meghan O'Rourke

Instead, I feared, I would be relegated to a world of the imaginary ill, exiled to an invisible kingdom from which I would never be allowed passage.

In my illness I was moored in an unreachable northern realm, exiled to an invisible kingdom, and it made me angry. I wanted to rejoin the throngs.

and to accept that the meaning of any given illness is unstable, indeterminate, and different from person to person.

To be chronically ill is to be in a state of ever-present “camouflaged grieving,” as the

illness, in any way, a lesson? Illness is a travesty; illness is shit; illness is not redemptive unless it happens to be for a particular ill person, for reasons that are not replicable nor should they be said to be so.

In the dark room where I listened to life happen around me when I was sick, I yielded a part of myself forever.

hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome

wisdom is not a goal but a process. As a process, it can always break down. I would contend that it does break down as soon as doctors stop recognizing the reality of a patient’s illness, or dismiss the patient’s pain. It can also break down when the suffering