Pain Fog; February 6 2021

Burn-out is real. I’ve been combatting it all throughout January and into the first week of February, so I’m hoping I start to bounce back soon. The pain and exhaustion are incredibly bad. I go by this chart – which, if you haven’t seen it before, I swear by it – and I’m averaging around a constant 7 or 8.

As a result, I’ve been thinking about disabled protagonists. There are woefully few of them, but we all knew that. The types of disability aren’t particularly varied, either; missing limbs or senses are the most common.

I can’t tell if it’s internalized ableism, but I can’t imagine writing a protagonist with chronic pain, and that’s bothering me. I feel like anyone who doesn’t have pain won’t understand why it’s debilitating some of the time, while the rest of the time we can power through it. I don’t know how I’d convey that the primary struggle is between the protagonist and their own body without being called unrealistic.

The unfortunate part about that is, I think that level of conflict could be really interesting as well as eye-opening. It skews the conflict against the protagonist and has so much potential for amping up the drama! The villain’s work is partway done – their nemesis is fighting their own physical capabilities at every turn!

Of course, there’s potential for it to become a damaging portrayal if you have the protagonist muster up the power to get things done in a dire moment. Sometimes, I can do that! Other times, I just can’t. No matter what the case, I’m sure to be bedridden the next day. The last thing I would want, though, would be to send a message that chronically ill people will ‘get over it’ when their disability becomes too inconvenient.

Ultimately, there’s a right and a wrong way to put this into fiction. Hopefully one day I’ll be more confident in my writing skills and be able to write a protagonist with chronic pain, but until then, do you know of any great disability representation? Particularly ‘lesser known’ disabilities?

* Apologies if this post was less comprehensible than normal! Pain also makes it pretty hard to think!