Trying…to make the invisible, visible

I am writing this through pain. Not that you would know. I am sat in a bar - snatching some time to talk to you. And yet, no piece needs writing. As a writer you can talk yourself out of it. Every. Single. Time. 

Just like I imagine you can talk yourself out of any painting should your instrument be a paintbrush.

That is until you write it or draw it and then you bloody did it. And it did matter and mean something. Even if only to you. So pushing on I am right now with this one. Through the fog of it. I hope you are doing better than me right now.

You wouldn’t know I am in pain because I look, well, fine. And that’s the point of me making the effort to write this.

My insides are churning; my mind is whirring and I can’t really focus - thanks to the joint thieves of endometriosis and adenomysis - which no, aren’t solely period diseases - but whole body illnesses. 

Just like the revolution will be televised - my modest equivalent right now? THERE WILL BE TYPOS. 

Bear with.

I am already a week late with this post. I managed to post this video on Instagram straight after the inspiration for today’s newsletter: Tracey Emin’s latest show at the White Cube - ‘I followed you to the end.’

Wanting to go see it for weeks - somehow - I got there on the very last day. Proper last chance saloon territory and I am so happy I did. But not perhaps for the reason you may think. Yes, some of the paintings really got me - not least ‘Flames of Love’ for the sheer animal sex of her paint strokes and ‘We do not sleep’ for a messy visceral representation of the chronically pained unable to easily slumber.

But you know what this art show made me do? Laugh. Wryly so. And then feel pretty damn sad. Vindicated but sad. 

I actually stood in the gallery space and looked at all of the spectators forced to see the invisible. What Emin has made visible: pain.

Just because you can’t see it - doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Just because the regularly pained don’t want to go on about it  - doesn’t mean it isn’t raging and robbing.

Just because many, myself included, lack the language to describe it - doesn’t mean it’s disappeared. 

A doctor with a vile bedside manner recently asked me how I was while we attended a dinner together. I tried to answer honestly. She had already tuned out not even halfway though my response. Even some top doctors don’t want to hear complicated answers. She just wanted me to say that because I now had my two children I was happy and well. I am the former but not the latter. Yet. Or at least not enough of the time. We still live in a society that cannot handle the grey.

I felt Emin, whom I’ve interviewed twice before - was forcing people to look. To see. And for the time I was there - I felt there was some shred of accountability for the unwell. 

Take a good look. And try - for just a second - to feel it. And think how you might fare; what you might need. 

This week we have learned the terrible numbers of how many more women are presently waiting for gynaecology appointments on the NHS compared to the  already staggering number pre-pandemic.

This is their lives; our lives. In pain.

Don’t forget what you can’t see, eh?