Intrepid Ghosts and Writing Identities

When I suffered a serious leg injury recently, an emerging feeling of bewilderment shook my self-perception, activating a downward slide in my self-identity and general confidence. My ability to convey the physical pain and attendant emotions was further undermined in my attempts to seek medical advice where I found myself increasingly positioned and disadvantaged by the discourses prevalent in these medical settings. Indeed, I was struggling to explain the physical and psychological manifestations to the health professionals. However, I found a degree of solace from my exploration of writing that centers on illness and injury, with a number of these investigations assisting me with my visits to health specialists, as I explain in this paper. As such, this paper utilizes autoethnography as testimony to chart aspects of my experiences in relation to the connections between discourse, identity, pain, and writing. In doing so, I describe a series of emotions and events related to this injury as a means for tracking changes in my autobiographical self during this period and providing unique insights into my experience.