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Anna Parker

Anna Park­er aka incurable.rager has been sick with MECFS since 2017, and devel­oped a severe form of the dis­ease after the birth of her daugh­ter in 2020.

“When my grief feels unbear­able, I’ll often process it through words. Some of the less chaot­ic poems I like to throw into the void in case it helps put words to some­one else’s suffering.”

Link:
Insta­gram

Poems
2020–2023

Mecfs/Soul Suck­er:
Inescapable
Unre­lent­ing
To cage an unwel­come beast in my ribs
It naws sucks and howls
To trap con­fine iso­late a host
A com­plete lack of sym­bio­sis
It is raw destruc­tion unquench­able greed
Devour­ing poten­tial curios­i­ty delight
Hol­low­ing to des­per­a­tion clawed sur­vival
Inca­pable organs remain
I am all con­sumed
Left to indis­tinct shadow

Chron­ic irreversible:

I wish I could describe the set-apart­ness.
The sep­a­rate plane I sub­sist from.
Run­ning, con­stant, inces­sant diag­nos­tics.
Count­ing the ever build­ing cost: of exist­ing.
The price my body and mind pay for oper­at­ing
a micro-cosim of sur­vival.
Nev­er, ever, ever, catch­ing up.
The weight is end­less, in my limbs and soul.
There is no respite.
It is being sen­tenced to a world behind a
plex­i­glass wall: an iso­la­tion in full view of life
missed.

I’m sick of being sick.
Time to move on.
I’ve explored every inch of this expe­ri­ence,
and it’s sim­ply not for me, not long term
any­ways.

I think I’ve giv­en it a sol­id run, but my
resources are exhaust­ed, my rela­tion­ships are
strained, and my men­tal health is in taters. To
pre­serve myself, I think I have to give it up.

I mean, I may have gained some cop­ing skills,
and pos­si­bly an increase in empa­thy. On the
whole though, I chock it up to a colos­sal
waste of time.

I’m actu­al­ly not entire­ly sure what oth­er peo­ple
get out of chron­ic ill­ness, but in all hon­esty, it’s
a bit tedious for me.

What I’ll do next? Well, any­thing but that,
real­ly.

Back to Olivia 

Continue to Judith Schossböck 

Back to the online exhibition