i come across affliction three times. i called my skin drama an affliction. it sounded dramatic enough, by the end it was no exaggeration at all. i felt it grew out of my mental affliction, it gave it expression. i had to find a name for it. then it morphed, another name came up. still healed, it draws my attention. what was it originally, behind the names, and the expression. i hesitate with words because i know that speaking your mind can get you in trouble for saying things you don't know you are about to say, that you may hear in stunned silence and not even mean. in silence you could hear the thought before the expression, if you could evoke the silence and ignore the noise. 
the other affliction was in my astrological chart. my interest was piqued by the word used to describe what some conjunctions might mean, or what they might cause to happen, those afflictions determined by relations in the heavens, so to speak, between these astral bodies and mine. these afflictions may be sourced many ways. our father, whose father, our stars, what stars.
now i listen to a piece from the album voices in my head called i eat myself alive. 
now i'm reading how forgiveness became essential to hannah arendt's thought, how she needed to reject the traditional understanding, to overcome her intellectual affliction, to unlearn it and learn it new.
i might unlearn what i lackadaisically learned about astrology, when i thought i was a sag, and thought the centaur was cool. i might get my capricorn on, take aim again, work my afflictions, fix my charted course.