This week, one of the works that resonated with me was Young’s Throwing Like A Girl, and I looked back on my childhood. The part about ‘yonder’, the space outside of a girl, hit something different than we touched on in class.
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2011 was the year I began distancing. By which I mean, I began a life lived from my twin bed, fueled by goldfish crackers and electrolyte drinks, seldom able to access the outside world. It wasn’t mine to call home anymore.
I was drowning in conditions that these doctors hardly knew about. I had no choice but to become my own doctor, nurse, and historian. More than anything, I became my own community.
The outside world was stolen from me by sickness, uncertainty, and administrative violence – this world was never built for my survival. Such predicaments were met with constant calls to push through – go into the world anyways, risk it all for a “normal” life. They said adapting to it would make me better. It wrecked my body and my mind. Being bedridden was extraordinarily taxing and painful in a way that cannot be understood by those who have not been fully immersed in it in this way, yet. But I am inseparable from my bedroom life, I am made of soft pillows and the world I built among them.
Continue readingIf anything has debunked the mind-body split for me, it’s living with OCD. My obsessions are felt as deeply as they are thought. Every day I physically feel my compulsions begging for my submission. In resisting them, my body is flooded with a deep, gnawing unrest.
The normalization of perfectionism convinced me that my OCD was good for me. I looked good on paper – but I see no paper in my skin, my blood, my brain, my bones. I have learned that to save this body, I cannot give everything my best. “Just right” can never be achieved so long as I am the judge. The goalpost moves too quickly to register.
Continue readingAs I prepare to graduate, I realise I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around ideas of being a graduate. Continue reading
While wandering through the internet recently, I discovered a Youtube series called Epic NPC Man. In this series, the main character is an NPC (Non-Player Character) and we are seeing things that are normal in a fantasy videogame, but from a different perspective. As I was watching this, the realization that this character is capable of independent thought and reflection was forced to do scripted things slowly dawned on me. As this happened, I began wondering if this was Hell?
There you have it folks!
Not only is Donald Trump a bigot, but now he is also a sexual assailant. Continue reading
I guess we all know the feeling of being heartbroken. The nonstop crying, the headache, the baggy eyes, the hate, the loneliness and the list goes on. Most of us associate heartbreak with only the psychological effects, and forget how much of a tool this can have to our body. See, being heartbroken has so much more to do then just going into depression. Continue reading
Back in the day, I used to binge drink on a weekly basis and in turn would often end up vomiting every few weeks from drinking too much. This led me to eventually develop a regiment for dealing with the nausea that is associated with such excessive drinking, but for the most part I had forgotten about it when I stopped binge drinking several years ago. Then a few weeks ago I was out drinking with my partner and some friends and upon return home I became very nauseous. I immediately fell into my old pattern for dealing with this nausea and carried it out, refusing my partner’s help and leaving to fall asleep alone.
The next day, I began reflecting on how this pattern of mine was a situation where I experienced the disciplined body to deal with some illness. Continue reading
For a couple of weeks, I have noticed something that has been circling my life, that something is oppression. Continue reading
A red faced woman stands in front of me with her lips pursed and a pink plush pig toy on the counter in several pieces. She reaches into her bag and throws more white stuffing onto the counter. Along with a balled up receipt, she throws at my chest. “I want a refund.”
I hate this part. Continue reading
Unruly Bodies 