The performance of wellness, both in public and in private spaces, often becomes a survival strategy. In the case of invisible chronic illness—to be alive often involves hiding or masking illness and disability, taking part in a continuous performance of the healthy body in a world set to normative standards. I was particularly thinking of the uncomfortable invisible autoimmune illness experience where the body does not feel consistently well or consistently unwell, but manifests with flares, times of crisis, but also periods of remission that last days, weeks, months. Since this type of illness is stealthy, unpredictable, uncanny and mysterious, it allows a person to occupy both the sick and not-sick categories of society. It is the dividing of selfhood that provokes an internal sense of un-belonging. "Sick of the performance of wellness" destabilizes the oppressive barriers that attempt to fix identity into binary categories of sickness and wellness.
 
11oz pure white cup with "sick of the performance of wellness" embossed in black.