#maybe its bc of how vulnerable i am while in an altered mental state; it may replicate the vulnerability i experienced as a child.

[dhampir-dyke]

[makeroomforthejolyghost]

HERE IT IS!!! i’ve been waiting 700 fuckin pages for this omg; i have such fuckin Collector’s Pride about this passage in proust bc i think it is. the only instance in anything i have ever read??? where an author describes how the interaction btwn feeling compelled to hide vs. to draw attention to their being sick[bats] plays out--and where they get it right, bc proust speaks 1. from personal experience and 2. without either undue self-defensiveness or -mockery. SO I AM GOING TO QUOTE IT AT LENGTH, w/ regrets if ur on mobile.

Neurotic subjects are perhaps less addicted than any ... to “listening to their insides”: they hear so many things going on by which they realise later that they were wrong to let themselves be alarmed, that they end by paying no attention to any of them. Their nervous systems have so often cried out to them for help, as though with some serious malady, when it was simply going to start snowing or they were going to move house, that they have acquired the habit of paying no more heed to these warnings than a soldier who in the heat of battle perceives them so little that he is capable, although dying, of carrying on for some days still the life of a man in perfect health. One morning, bearing within me all my habitual ailments, from whose constant internal circulation I kept my mind turned as resolutely away as from the circulation of my blood, I came running blithely into the dining-room where my parents were already at table, and--having assured myself, as usual, that to feel cold may mean not that one ought to warm oneself but that, for instance, one has received a scolding, and not to feel hungry may mean that it is going to rain and not that one ought to fast--had taken my place between them when in the act of swallowing the first mouthful of a particularly tempting cutlet, a nausea and dizziness brought me to a halt, the feverish reaction of an illness that had already begun, the symptoms of which had been masked ... by the ice of my indifference, but which obstinately refused the nourishment that I was not in a fit state to absorb. Then, at the same moment, the thought that I would be prevented from going out if I was seen to be unwell gave me, as the instinct of self-preservation gives a wounded man, the strength to crawl to my own room, where I found that I had a temperature of 104, and then to get ready to go to the Champs-Elysées. Through the languid and vulnerable shell which encased them, my eager thoughts were urging me towards, were clamouring for the soothing delight of a game of prisoner’s base with Gilberte, and an hour later, barely able to keep on my feet, but happy in being by her side, I had still the strength to enjoy it. (2.92-3)

fjslahgsdf i love that (in addition to being complete nonsense in context) his rationalization re feeling cold teaches him to associate illness w/ punishment and thus w/ bad behavior??? and how he slides right from there to the more obvious connection btwn these phenomena, i.e. that as a child u feel compelled to hide both so as not to let ur parents deprive you of a privilege. also haha notice that in spite of his habitual lack of interest in food the narrator describes the cutlet as “particularly tempting,” vs. his later description of “eager thoughts” inside a “languid and vulnerable shell” holy... shit... yes??? i. get maybe unnecessarily excited, when i see depicted this, like. necessary cognitive dissonance. that comes w/ chronic illness; i often see that phenomenon reduced to “we fake being well, not being sick” but that never quite feels accurate to my experience. like it’s true that’s what ur doing when you go out n try to look nice and have fun, do school &c. w/out mentioning to anyone that ur not well, yeah, but. qua sensation it’s more like a disconnect btwn the state of the fleshcase and the standard by which u judge external phenomena. like? the threshold past which you lose the ability to do that--to aesthetically appreciate or even feel tempted by food you intellectually know would nauseate you, for example--gets way higher; you develop a tolerance to the altered state, i guess, as you would to an actual drug.

anyway, also this:

For some time now I had been liable to fits of breathlessness, and our doctor, braving the disapproval of my grandmother, who saw me already dying a drunkard’s death, had recommended me to take ... beer, champagne or brandy when I felt an attack coming. ... I was often obliged, so that my grandmother should allow it to be given to me, instead of disguising, almost to make a display of my state of suffocation. On the other hand, as soon as I felt it coming, ... I would grow distressed at the thought of my grandmother’s anxiety, of which I was far more afraid than of my own sufferings. But at the same time my body, either because it was too weak to keep those sufferings secret, or because it feared lest, in their ignorance of the imminent attack, people might demand of me some exertion which it would have found impossible or dangerous, gave me the need to warn my grandmother of my symptoms with a precision into which I put a sort of physiological punctiliousness. If I observed in myself a disturbing symptom which I had not previously discerned, my body was in distress so long as I had not communicated it to my grandmother. If she pretended to take no notice, it made me insist. Sometimes I went too far; and that beloved face, which was no longer able always to control its emotion as in the past, would betray an expression of pity, a painful contraction. ... And its scruples being at the same time calmed by the certainty that she was now aware of the discomfort that I felt, my body offered no opposition to my reassuring her. I protested that this discomfort was not really painful, that I was in no sense to be pitied, that she might be quite sure that I was now happy; my body had wished to secure exactly the amount of pity that it deserved, and, provided that someone knew that it had a pain in its right side, it could see no harm in my declaring that this pain was of no consequence and was not an obstacle to my happiness (93-4)

i just?? yes? exactly!!! that is exactly how it works like it feels fucking horrible not to tell anyone but also u. don’t want to, because it will inevitably sound like a Big Deal, and sort of is a big deal In The Grand Scheme Of Things re how much it affects your life, but in order to admit that (and thus not have to worry about how to Break The News when and if it becomes relevant) you risk making it sound Tragic or Scary, which it isn’t, because it’s. normal. i like that the only role he gives to fear, here, is worry about how to navigate social situations while ill; i’ve been so indignant lately about all the time i spent accepting other people’s perception that i was afraid of being or becoming ill when... no? he’s right; that stopped being scary ages ago. what u have is a constant quiet knowledge that u are Weak and Ailing--in a way/to an extent that it may or may not be safe or plausible to hide--and a fear of how that might affect ur social existence and ability to function. and it’s so fucking nice to see that mentality figure in a story!!!