"Not having to see your f*cking horrible bastard face wandering around my garden"
Getting to the guts of Frida Kahlo's pain
Dearest uncultured swine,
I couldn’t respect anyone who reduced an artist to their personal experiences. Since I’ve never had self-respect, this affects me nil. I could recite Frida Kahlo’s life to you verbatim and probably name four? of her paintings. Problematic! but factual. Of all the experiences and related artwork of Kahlo’s to be writing about, I’ve chosen the most sick. Like actually: sickness and pain. Stick with me but, cause it’s a ripper!
Just a flesh-wound
It was around 9:20am on a Tuesday. Hunched over my desk, I turned to my then-boss and said, “I’m so sorry, but I think I need to go”. He tentatively nodded. I grabbed my bag, black spots forming in my vision, and stifled a heave as I walked to my car. On these days, my relationship with pain is the only one that matters.
Frida Kahlo’s longest and most torrid affair wasn’t, as popular opinion would have it, with Diego Rivera. It was with ill health. This isn’t a peer-reviewed take, but a hunch from someone experienced in her own regular, painful interruptions. And admittedly, chronic-pain chica to chronic-pain chica, pain isn’t very interesting to hear about.
Thanks to divine misfortune, Kahlo (above) had a lifetime to find interesting ways to express her ills. In 1913, aged six, she contracted polio and was house-bound for a lengthy period. Though the illness shrunk her right-leg and ostracised her from peers, the time spent with her father, an artist and photographer, was indelible to the eventual icon.
Shit got more fucked in 1925 when, aged eighteen, Kahlo and her then boyfriend were in a fatal bus accident. He walked away with some scratches. She was impaled on a handrail which split her pelvis, punctured her abdomen and uterus and broke her poorly right-leg in eleven places. So, figuratively speaking, a typical high-school romance (too dark?).
Though we clench at the horrifying details of her injuries, less visceral is our understanding of a subsequent lifetime of pain. The Broken Column (above) is a raw depiction of her wounds, yet was painted almost two decades after the initial accident. Chronic pain that would otherwise be difficult to articulate, is immediately easier to comprehend. Seized yet crumbling spine, torn yet restricted flesh, broken yet determined stare.
Would I be institutionalised if I painted my symptoms for a clinician? Yes. Regardless, visually representing Kahlo’s sensations made them more identifiable. Though she skilfully shows the physical complexities of her pain, it can be difficult to distinguish the true source of her angst. Because three years after the bus accident, she was embroiled in yet another painful experience.
Diego Rivera and Kahlo moved in similar circles and met through a mutual friend. Rivera was 21 years her senior, a well-known painter, muralist and progressive activist. Naturally, Kahlo sought his tutelage, naturally, Rivera wanted to have sex with her. A year later they married to a celebrity buzz unmatched until Brad and Jen in 2000.
We've culturally dined-out on the machinations of their relationship, so I’ll spare you most. Neither Kahlo nor Rivera were monogamous. Where one found non-monogamy liberating! the other was brutalised by unrelenting transgressions. More succinctly put: Rivera and Kahlo’s sister, Cristina, had sex. Many times. Looking at Memory, The Heart (below), it’s obvious Rivera hurt Kahlo. Less obvious is how he actually hurt Kahlo.
“My painting carries with it the message of pain” Frida Kahlo
To preface: I have no medical training. My understanding of the mind/pain relationship is from personal experience, advice received and online snooping. From what I gather, our brain controls our hormones and different hormones affect our experience of pain; so, emotions affect the brain, which effects our hormones, which effects our pain.
Further to this sombre point, chronic pain can be a comorbidity of PTSD, depression and anxiety. Emotional distress can actually cause pain. But what of the ailments we already had?
I’m making a clinical connection that Kahlo instinctively made. She regularly represented her personal wounds as physical (see above) and conflated them with ones she’d already sustained. Momentarily delaying surgery in the year before her death, she wrote to Rivera:
“When they told me it would be necessary to amputate, the news didn’t affect me the way everybody expected. No, I was already a maimed woman when I lost you, again, for the umpteenth time maybe, and still I survived.” (excerpt from Letters Of Note: Love)
She goes on to say, “I’m amputating you.” Considering what we know of emotion and pain associations, her physiological comparison mightn’t be such a stretch. She seemed very aware the source of her pains, and amputating her leg did little to remedy them.
I can seek sympathy by talking about my pelvic pain with others, but they’re unsure of what to do; as powerless as me. Kahlo’s visceral paintings connect with an experience that can otherwise be so, utterly, isolating. I’m physically and emotionally marred in ways both related to my painful junctures, and not. At times, it feels like that’s impossible to love. Then I look at Diego and think, there’s the fucking clown that left Frida Kahlo.
March is Endometriosis Action Month! Woohoo!
I’m a middle-class white woman! So I made Frida Kahlo’s pain about me!!
Endometriosis is a disease that affects one in ten girls and women - yet you still need invasive procedures, shit loads of money or lengthy wait times for a diagnosis!
Research is showing current treatments may be doing harm! But still lack resources to do much about that!
I’ve been given everything from the pill to fucking opioids for pain management with varied results but plenty of side-effects!
It takes an average of six years for diagnosis, during which time you’re entitled to 10 days of sick leave per annum! Cram some illness, trans-vaginal ultrasounds and specialists into that!
Fun! If you want to help, start with some light reading, this piece made me cry cry cry. Follow activists such as @luciaoc and @ginarushtonauthor and read their books!
Thank you, love you, C U Next Tuesday!!! Maggie Jean xxxxx