From Silent Hill II to Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition

I

"In my restless dreams, I see that town. Silent Hill. You promised me you'd take me there again someday. But you never did. Well, I'm alone there now...in our "special place", waiting for you...

Waiting for you to come to see me. But you never do. And so I wait, wrapped in my cocoon of pain and loneliness. I know I've done a terrible thing to you. Something you'll never forgive me for. I wish I could change that, but I can't. I feel so pathetic and ugly laying here, waiting for you... Every day I stare up at the cracks in the ceiling and all I can think about is how unfair it all is... The doctor came today. He told me I could go home for a short stay. It's not that I'm getting better. It's just that this may be my last chance..."

As the letter reads, the story of Silent Hill 2 becomes clear: James’s wife, Mary, was consumed by illness—her pain twisting her emotions, sometimes cursing James, sometimes begging him not to leave. Her suffering trapped them both in despair. Years of chronic agony drained James’s reason and love until he chose the most tragic way to end it all.

II

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. 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 envy others-those who can talk and walk on the streets normally,and to believe no one could truly understand me.

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

Pain 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.

III

What does it mean to be ill? To doctors, disease 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 because of unbearable headache. 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 doctor to fit me in, but she just said, “I’m too busy today. It’s normal to feel a bit uncomfortable with your new medicine.”

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.

The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition, written by Harvard medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman, argues that there are three layers of sickness:

Disease — the physiological disorder seen by doctors;

Illness — the patient’s lived experience of pain, fear, and social isolation;

Sickness — how society perceives and labels the “sick.”

Kleinman argues that modern medicine focuses too narrowly on curing disease, neglecting the illness—the way life itself is disrupted by suffering. True healing, he writes, is helping a person move from being a patient back to being a person.

Indeed, according to my interviews, it is much more important to know what sort of patient has a disease than what sort of disease a patient has. Each patient responds to illness in a different way—some with anger, others with despair or resentment. Some turn to superstition; others, for financial reasons, give up treatment altogether. Yet beneath these varied reactions lies a common thread: the helplessness of losing control over one’s own body and destiny.

Thus, beyond sympathy or comfort, what we should do is respect and listening.

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