Everybody thinks its psychosomatic when the young woman begins to complain of stomach pain and lose weight.

(from The Iowa Review, Volume 34, Number 3)

A heart-breaking and poetically told story. The narrator’s constant pain, coupled with the condescension all the supposed experts, makes her an excellent protagonist. Some of the language — “a charcoal sky bruised with November” — is wonderfully harsh and memorable.
But. See. There is a crazy, bullshitty final paragraph, one offset by white space and the common practice of placing three stars in the middle to indicate a cosmic shift. Whatever. Don’t let it get you down, this story is mostly excellent, if utterly un-uplifting.

I’ve been at this Short Story Project for a little while now, and it’s time I started identifying some of the usual suspects I’ve encountered in my adventures. I mean no harm by this.

“On Leaving Normal Behind” is an Illness Story. One can recognize this genre by the following characters: doctors who are wrong, patients who are misunderstood, loved ones who are helpless and friends who have no idea what to say or do for the sick person. One can also expect scenes of despair, flashes false hope, desire to turn back time and moments where the sick person encounters somebody who has it a little bit worse. There will also be a fellow patient in a nearby room who moans, wails, or otherwise refuses to go gently in to that good night. It’s just like real life, mind you.