Why does talking about trauma remain one of the only socially acceptable ways women can discuss health, discomfort, or pain? I would like to prize my object of reflection over my feelings about it, but in the limbo of medical illegibility, the object is reduced to the feeling.

I saw more doctors, tried to answer more devastating, hopeless questions. Had I ever had joint stiffness in the morning, for at least an hour, lasting for more than six weeks? (Yes.) Had I noticed nodules under the skin around my ankles and elbows? (Yes.) Erythema nodosum, tender, red bumps on the shins? (Yes.) Had I experienced night sweats? (Yes.) Jaw pain when chewing? (No.) Sudden, rapid hair loss? (Yes.) Amenorrhea? (Yes.) Had I experienced a gritty, sandy feeling in my eyes? (Yes.) Neck pain? (Yes.) Rashes on my cheeks? (Yes.) For more than a month? (No.) Psoriasis? (No.) Rashes (not sunburn) after sun exposure? (Yes.) Sores in the mouth or nose for more than two weeks at a time? (Yes.) Dry mouth? (Yes.) Fingers unusually sensitive to cold? (Yes.) Fingers changing color in the cold? (Yes.) Blood clots in lungs or legs? (No.) Angina? (No.) Chest pain made worse by breathing and lasting for more than a few days? (No.) Asthma? (Yes.) Had I ever had tuberculosis? (No.) Frequent abdominal pain? (Yes.) Blood in stool? (Yes.) Nausea? (Yes.) Heartburn? (Yes.) Muscle weakness for more than three months? (Yes.) Muscle cramps? (Yes.) Weakness or dizziness when rising from a sitting position lasting for more than three months? (Yes.) Neurologic numbness or tingling? (Yes.) Pulmonary fibrosis? (No.) Thyroid disease? (No.) Lymphoma? (No.) Easy bruising? (Yes.) Swollen lymph nodes? (Yes.) Hives? (Yes.) Eczema? (Yes.) Pain with urination? (Yes, from frequent bladder infections.) Ulcers on vagina, penis, or scrotum? (Yes, but with negative STD tests.) Infertility? (Almost certainly.) Miscarriage? (No.) Depression? (Ha!)

“He used to look again and again at things he did not understand,” Freud wrote of Charcot, “to deepen his impression of them day by day, till suddenly an understanding of them dawned on him.” Charcot, the great visual observer. Freud’s revolutionary contribution was to see the hysteria patients as speaking subjects. Symptoms that could previously be interpreted only through their visual presentation could now be spoken about, be interpreted through language. Freud’s interpretation of hysteria symptoms as “compromise formations” created by the collision of the repressed idea or desire with the suppression, hybridizes them: the symptom is both articulated and repressed, both psychic and embodied.