My aunt had a big old chunky hand-carved Dubrovnik set she picked up in Yugoslavia in the early 80s. Each piece was over 5 feet tall and moved around on a football field-sized board with an elaborately geared system of pulleys and levers. Tournaments were winner-take-all affairs, with the losers consigned to tower jail cells. In the event of a draw both players were executed.
They had gone so long without, a compliment would have destroyed them.
We usually tried to avoid his visits, which often felt weighted with some unspecified tension or grievance. Later I learned that throughout this period he’d been in dreadful pain, and that our times together had been among the few things that distracted him from his suffering.
Is the thought worth the effort it would take to express itself in words?
symptom: fatigue
diagnosis: fatigue
Decades later, encouraged by a friend to obtain his old psychiatric reports, he was mortified to read what he had perceived to be a courageous hero’s journey described as the petulant dithering of a timid neurotic.
