hi！You! The root of my pain

The pain strikes again. Every time I wake from a nap, I might be hit by that sharp, splitting headache.

I' ve taken medicine, done tests, yet the pain persists—random and unpredictable. Maybe it's stress?

Whatever the cause, it hasn't faded; it has simply become part of life.

Pain has reshaped my world.

I began to understand why, in Silent Hill 2, James’s sick wife turned into a monster in his mind. My pain made me irritable at everything: It became routine to yell at my parents and then feel guilty right after.

Unconsciously, I began to see myself as a patient—to envy the healthy, to believe no one could truly understand me.

Pain redefined certainty.Ordinary things that I once believed them as supposed to have—studying, going out, hanging with friends—were denied by illness.

It also redefined my view of doctors. They became the ultimate authority—the only ones who could save me.

But when their diagnoses didn't work, I started to hate them too. I kept switching doctors, yet deep down, what I really wanted was to reclaim control over my own fate.

At that time, I hadn't yet read The Illness Narratives, but when I did—two years later, in my sophomore year—it resonated deeply.

What does it mean to be ill?To doctors, illness means finding lesions, inflammation, or tumors inside your body.But to patients, illness means exhaustion, sleepless nights, and the constant presence of pain.

I remember one night at school when I woke up with unbearable toothache. Unable to sleep, I sneaked into the bathroom with a flashlight and read Ordinary World until I finally dozed off two hours later.

The next morning, I begged my dentist to fit me in, but she just said, “I’m too busy today. After your root surgery, it’s normal to feel a bit uncomfortable.”

That “bit of discomfort”crushed me.I didn’t know if I was too unlucky or too fragile.

The pain eventually passed, but I never knew when the next one would come. However, I know that beyond prescribing painkillers and giving vague advice, the doctors could do little.

Arthur Kleinman once emphasized that paying attention to patients' experiences of illness helps them return from the identity of “the sick” to that of “a person in society.”

That has become my goal too—to respect patients' sense of self and agency when I talk with them.