On Illness As Metaphor
In a dazzling essay for Psychology Today, author Gina Frangello challenges the long celebrated pronouncement by Susan Sontag that illness is not a metaphor. She writes, “Illness is only a metaphor, perhaps, if we use it to hold ourselves at arm’s length from time. It does not ‘signify’ our mortality, because we all inhabit our mortality fully every day, whether we choose to look it in the face or not.”
Frangello’s insight about the inescapability of mortality comes from the experience of a serious car accident that came at a time when, five years after being treated for cancer, she had been doing intense work through exercise and lifestyle change to, as she puts it, “reclaim” her body. “By Thanksgiving 2021, I was feeling stronger, more agile, more ‘like myself’ than I had since before cancer,” she writes.
But then came her car accident and the pain and limitations that went along with the injuries she had sustained. Losing the sense of strength—both physical and mental—that she had gained during her year of dedicated training caused her to question what she had really meant by feeling more “like herself.”
Frangello says, “…I’d often felt alien to myself as I’d yearned—without even being conscious of it—for the youthful, abled body I’d possessed before illness, before menopause, before becoming part cyborg, before turning 50. ‘More like myself again’ meant, of course, like a younger version of Me.”
Ultimately, both illness and wellness can be metaphors for us, shorthand we use in the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. And whatever state of being our physical bodies are experiencing is of necessity, because we are storytelling primates, going to be understood by us through a haze of metaphors.
It’s wrenchingly difficult to shrug off the many layers of narrative around what come down to a set of physiological facts. Am I weak, morally, because I am weak physically? Am I strong, as a person, because I work to build my physical strength? Sometimes it takes a quick shock to recalibrate our understanding, to step away from stories that may be comforting.
“We can regain strength—we can recover—but we cannot go back in time,” Frangello concludes. “Our bodies are constantly moving targets. Whatever comes next for me—and for you—won’t be a ‘return’ to ourselves, because our selves, too, are constantly evolving.”
The grace of that understanding can help us accept ourselves where we are, and to shape our thoughts about how we can move forward. Especially at this time of year, where light is fading and we are reflecting on the transition from past to future, a piece like Gina Frangello’s is a powerful reminder of the importance of looking ahead.
