Cover Photo: Aisha Hassan's spinal scans in black in white, copied side by side.
MRI Scan/courtesy of Aisha Hassan

How My Body Spoke to Me in Sickness

I was convinced that I could handle it all—including healing myself.

the

Today I feel raw and drained and lowLife remains wonderful and I feel safe within myself

I must get betterBut I feel sad, want to sink into the ground, want to be swallowed by something, and yet and yet and yet I don’t want to make anyone else sad, I just want to get better, or maybe the issue is that I don’t know what vision of a future I’m looking for.

absurd

Daring Greatly

Aisha Hassan is a Malaysian writer and entrepreneur. Her fiction and journalism have appeared in publications such as Quartz, Harper's Bazaar Malaysia, Barren Magazine, and XRAY Literary Magazine. She is the co-founder of Dia Guild, an e-commerce platform that supports artisanship, and also works for a charitable foundation in Malaysia. She has a BA in English Language & Literature from the University of Oxford and a Masters in Journalism from Columbia University. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram @aishabhassan.