BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

First let me say I don't like being fat. Yes, I diet and yes, to the degree my disability (unrelated to my weight) allows me - I do exercise. A while back someone posted really malicious things about my weight, my character and even my disability online. Even throwing in a very twisted, backward and upside-down version of what really occurred between us. To wit (edited for foul language): You used the internet to track him down after 30 years, which wasn’t too hard because he’s a published writer. You got him to agree to meet up with you. When he did meet up with you, to his horror, he saw that his ex-girlfriend from college had ballooned into a 275 lb fat pig with poor hygiene and he didn’t want to bang you. He politely excused himself by saying he couldn’t do this to his wife. You then began stalking him and his family, driving by his house, sending letters to anyone with whom you thought you could slander his good name. His poor wife was left with no choice but to report you...

I have been thinking a lot about the term “invisible” a lot lately. (What can I say? I am a semantics dork. But you already knew that.)After all, it’s the word “invisible” that sets this whole movement apart, that makes an enormous difference to the many, many patients who live with diseases they feel but others cannot see. Though the absence of outward physical manifestation of illness in no way negates the existence of illness, the world doesn’t always work like that, and that’s where the stories so universal to the invisible illness experience originate: the stares and comments when a “healthy-looking” person uses a handicapped placard; the judgments and whispers in stores or other public places when people do not move as quickly or efficiently as they look like they should be able to; the insinuations patients are lazy or malingering because they are not cured and “don’t look sick.” This is the part of invisible illness that is challenging, these preconceived benchmarks of what hea...