Chronic illness is having a freezer full of ice packs. It’s the most expensive part of your grocery order being massive back pain patches. It’s endless money spent on parking at doctors, cabs, MetroAccess. It’s $400 in powerchair repairs, due immediately.

It’s being relieve when you’re choosing which stranger is interacting with your body that day, when they bring relief instead of invasive questions.

It’s hearing the sounds of your body clicking and clacking with every move. It’s feeling your back slip out of place less than a month after the last time it was put back.

It’s constantly needing pain relief, of one sort of another, never being able to afford everything that would help.

It’s finally getting the tools you need, then getting a new diagnosis and having to toss much of it out for brand new ones.

It’s feeling like you’re too inconsistent to be anyone’s friend. It’s constantly playing catch up when you get sick. It’s having no vacation days for an actual vacation, because what if you lose weeks again?

It’s having a complicated relationship with cooking, food, caring and being cared for. It’s constant power push and pull.

It’s exhausting. Always.

It’s fertility issues, inside and outside to it body, even when your chronic illness has nothing to do with reproduction. It’s facing eugenicist rhetoric every day.