Summary of Elissa Bassist's Hysterical

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 I’m a thirty-something Virgo, living in Brooklyn, and I love Joan Didion. I’m also a single, thirty-something Virgo, living in Brooklyn, and I love writing. I’d kept a journal for twenty-one years and had published a book about the last decade of my life. I’d been writing for comparison’s sake for most of my life. I’d graduated from journalism school decades ago, but like so many other female journalists had before me, I’d never been able to break out of the well. My first magazine job after college was at the Village Voice. My first freelance piece was published in the Washington City Paper. My first bylined feature was in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. It wasn’t until I was thirty-five that I finally got my big break: a two-part story on female athletes and eating disorders in Sports Illustrated—the first sports feature ever written by a woman with no ties to professional sports. In 2016, Sports Illustrated made a point of hiring more women than men and told me before they would do so that it was part of their strategy to diversify their staff.

#2 I had a headache that wouldn’t go away, and the doctors couldn’t diagnose it. It was a cluster headache, which is so rare that doctors don’t know how to treat them, and I went through a year of tests. I was still in pain, but it had spread to my right eye, which was dilated.

#3 A woman in pain is expected to answer pleasantly or exuberantly, with pain redacted. I hated to be insolent, but I was not better or getting better or feeling better. The allegation of better lost its significance to a person in a pain that no one else was in.

#4 I had a cluster headache, which is so rare that doctors don’t know how to treat them. It spread to my right eye, which was dilated. I was still in pain, but it had spread to my right breast.

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