Sick Quotes

“And the deal with so many chronic illnesses is that most people won't want to believe you. They will tell you that you look great, that it might be in your head only, that it is likely stress, that everything is okay. None of these are the right things to say to someone whose entire existence is a fairly consistent torture of the body and mind. They say it because they are well-intentioned usually, because they wish you the best, but they also say it because you make them uncomfortable. Your existence is evidence of death. . . .”
― Porochista Khakpour, Sick: A Memoir

“It is no coincidence then that doctors and patients and the entire Lyme community report—anecdotally, of course, as there is still a frustrating scarcity of good data on anything Lyme-related—that women suffer the most from Lyme. They tend to advance into chronic and late-stage forms of the illness most because often it's checked for last, as doctors often treat them as psychiatric cases first. The nebulous symptoms plus the fracturing of articulacy and cognitive fog can cause any Lyme patient to simply appear mentally ill and mentally ill only. This is why we hear that young women—again, anecdotally—are dying of Lyme the fastest. This is also why we hear that chronic illness is a women's burden. Women simply aren't allowed to be physically sick until they are mentally sick, too, and then it is by some miracle or accident that the two can be separated for proper diagnosis. In the end, every Lyme patient has some psychiatric diagnosis, too, if anything because of the hell it takes getting to a diagnosis.”
― Porochista Khakpour, Sick: A Memoir

“Love is the only good way many of us know how to feel alive.”
― Porochista Khakpour, Sick: A Memoir

“It reminded me that illness will always be with you as long as life is with you. And tragedy will be with you too.”
― Porochista Khakpour, Sick: A Memoir

“Was all the hardship there to demonstrate how unlucky I was, or was I actually a very lucky person given that I'd survived so much?”
― Porochista Khakpour, Sick: A Memoir

“Love is the only good way many of us know how to feel alive.
And the ghost I so often was wanted badly to feel real. And the characters in this section can at least tell you I existed. They might not have thought of me much, but they can tell you I was real. Sometimes too real.”
― Porochista Khakpour, Sick: A Memoir

“I hate to exercise, I hate to meditate, I don't enjoy eating well, I never get proper sleep. I am not a poster child for wellness.
I am a sick girl. I know sickness. I live with it. In some ways, I keep myself sick."
"Sick" Porochista Khakpour”
― Porochista Khakpour, Sick: A Memoir

“I sometimes wonder if I would have been less sick if I had had a home.”
― Porochista Khakpour, Sick: A Memoir

“I have been through so much, I wanted to say, but the words were tangled in my throat.”
― Porochista Khakpour, Sick: A Memoir

“I knew I had to live because, well, I didn't have the imagination to think otherwise.”
― Porochista Khakpour, Sick: A Memoir

“And the deal with so many chronic illnesses is that most people won’t want to believe you. They will tell you that you look great, that it might be in your head only, that it is likely stress, that everything will be okay. None of these are the right things to say to someone whose entire existence is a fairly consistent torture of the body and mind. They say it because they are well-intentioned usually, because they wish you the best, but they also say it because you make them uncomfortable. Your existence is evidence of death, and no one needs to keep seeing that—especially not the people who gave birth to you. They are not supposed to live to see you not live. It’s not the way nature is supposed to work, after all. (And yet nature looks that way all the time—it’s just our morality transposed on nature that requires it be benevolent.)”
― Porochista Khakpour, Sick: A Memoir

“Because my illness at this stage has no cure, I can forever own this discomfort of the body. I can always say this was all a mistake. To find a home in my body is to tell a story that doesn’t exist. I am a foreigner, but in ways that go much deeper than I thought, under the epidermis and into the blood cells.”
― Porochista Khakpour, Sick: A Memoir

“It reminded me that illness will always be with you as long as life is with you. And tragedy will be with you too.”
― Porochista Khakpour, Sick: A Memoir

“I hate to exercise, I hate to meditate, I don't enjoy eating well, I never get proper sleep. I am not a poster child for wellness.
I am a sick girl. I know sickness. I live with it. In some ways, I keep myself sick.”
― Porochista Khakpour, Sick: A Memoir

“I ran like someone running away from something, as if my demons were literally chasing me across the park. I ran crying, tears streaming down my face, and one time I caught myself yelling, a strange canine yelp that felt strangely good to release into that cold wind.”
― Porochista Khakpour, Sick: A Memoir