It’s still very clear in my mind, the day I walked into the Pain Clinic at Flinders. I was in my early twenties, and I immediately felt unsettled. The walls were rotting and peeling, and I felt squished and oppressed from the low ceilings and tight spaces. It was as though everything about the corridors and waiting area was designed to be as uncomfortable as some post-modernist Foucauldian institution.

When I was first diagnosed with fibro my Mum took me along to a fibromyalgia meetup at Arthritis SA. I was all of nineteen, fresh off being unable to remain at university doing Creative Writing, despite trying so very hard to remain, and enjoying myself there.