Some days it appears we
trudge around as galactic robots, as monochromatic wanna-be’s, as people
desperately straining to connect with each other and the tattered versions of
ourselves. It also feels like we don’t talk about this disconnection often. It
is much easier to ask someone out for drinks or a lunch at a cool vegetarian spot
than it is to ask them if they are in their body. Most of us would agree this kind
of getting to the point is not the jam. And how would the conversation go
anyway?
Hey do you want to go
for drinks Friday?
Sure we've been trying
to get together forever!
Good because I wanted to
talk about you not being in your body. Love those boots!
What do you mean I’m not
in my body? I am totally in my body. Look, don’t you see me in my body?
(This
is the part where you use your experience and your imagination to decide what
might or might not happen afterwards.)
“We’ve all been taught to
walk around like have our shit together.”
-Eve Ensler
I was afraid of my body
because it did things I did not know it could do. I was afraid of my body
because it did things I did know that it could do: Que, sumimasen, what chu
talking bout Willis—say what? I was oh-no about my body
because it included a map to places underground and beneath the sea. I was
terrified because I couldn't swim even though my body is 70 percent water. How
could I learn to float when I hated lying on my back? I was don’t touch in
my body because it had a silent alarm. It had a false alarm. It was alarmed. My
body was a place where the cops didn’t visit—where the address was
mythological, purgatory, suck it up and pink quicksand. It is here in the oh-no and don’t
touch that I decided that I didn’t have to be in my body. I decided
that I would visit my body like the spirit of an old friend. I’d come check on
me in times of extreme emotions. Pain made me envision my body as one big exit
sign, my entrance always awkward, the wrong way and battling automatic trigger
doors.
Fear of being in my body
often boogie man-ed in the form of take me out, take me down, take me nowhere
or…take me. I came to the conclusion after a take me out experience that I did
not want a ball of trauma to throw itself between my breast, lymph nodes, uterus
or colon. I did not want a ball of trauma to dribble on me. And how do you
prevent a ball from bouncing its way (in)side?
I grew a beautiful ball
of trauma. Her hair a tangle of betrayal, truth, fear and distrust. She came as
a reminder that wounded, waiting for bad
things to happen and severed limbs is not the way I desired to live. I
named her Luna when I know for sure she was the Martyr I could not be.
You know you are in your
body when you don’t misplace pieces of yourself like keys or a wallet.
-A.
When you tell people all
afterglow and joy that you finally have arrived in your body they look at
you as if you are blue sun or a newborn sock. When you arrive in your body you
are okay with blue sun and newborn sock. You go around pointing at the blue sun
and barefoot in your newborn socks. You are okay with pow and shazaam. You are
okay with new pages in a sacred text. You are okay with mighty full instead of
barely half. Lately I have been thinking about what I would tell people who may
be experiencing running away from being present and in their bodies—not as a
know-it-all but as an I-feel-you. I get it.
I decided I would say
the following:
If you have to be in
your body and you want to be in your body, you have to first hallelujah/knee
slap/cabbage patch/high five/ booty bump/ yayyyy!, you are alive:
1. When you wake up do
not complain or ask why you must wake up. Do not say you
Don’t want to wake up or
that you hate days like this. Somewhere there is a woman hovering over her body
on a day like this asking why.
2. When you take what
you have been trained to think is a deep breath, go deeper still. Imagine your
particular deep as not deep but parallel to a line with no start or finish.
3. When you eat, stop.
Do not let yourself chew until the food has settled in the shape of your
tongue. Ask yourself what did you do to deserve this food blessing? Tell
yourself the truth—absolutely nothing. Give thanks. As you begin to chew honor
each tooth. Even the ones you hardly see. Sometimes a back street molar gets no
street credit, bonus marks or lettered accolades for having to be twice as
hard, twice as strong and the most humble.
4. Tell your whole self
it is divine. Do not leave out your anus or the dirty bottoms of your feet or
angsty crooked toes. Do not leave out the lone hair or a cratered nipple or a
fresh stretchmark on a not so new piece of skin. Say the word divine as if it’s
a foreign language you desperately want to learn. Enunciation is the key.
Divine. Take the word divine and add it to your hot drink, put it on your
toilet tissue and wipe. Divine. Mix this word with your jojoba oil, slather it
in your hair and on your elbows careful not to miss the place your false alarm
used to be. Careful not to miss the oh-no and take out.
5. Do something that
makes you feel wooo plus oh wow! The something cannot be a thing that gives you
nightmares or a thing that makes you go the next day for a batter of
test—rather this thing must make you feel the kind of proud that inflates on
the inside. This thing must make you feel like first time flying with a new set
of wings. These wings, ones you've been keeping in storage.
6. Feel something. Say self,
what are you missing? Say self, what do you want
to feel? Asking questions means you are alive.
7. Get naked for reasons
other than showering, or sexual intimacy. Watch your heartbeat in the mirror.
Count the number of beats for the length of time you are able to stare at your
glorious body. Be in your body. Say, self I am alive.
8. Breathe. Remind
yourself every hour to do so. Pretend this breathing and reminding every hour
is a necessary medicine for a week. Not like take three of these and call me in
the morning, more like take this every hour with water kind of medicine.
9. When you feel the
sudden urge to mimic the dead—remind yourself you are alive.
10. Experience the kind
of pleasure that makes you want to shout about it, write about it or tell
someone about it. This kind of pleasure should be experienced without
hesitation. This kind of experience is different than the alive experience
mentioned in number 6.
11. Train your eyes to
see beyond what you can see. You are already seeing the reflection of a
thing—try to see the details in the reflection. Don’t just I see it,
see. it.
12. Tell a truth. I do
not believe a truth alone will set you free, but I do believe a truth will
unbutton you.
13. Eat foods you
haven’t tasted. Stop taking your taste buds for granted. They are alive.
Celebrate the way you would
celebrate on your birthday only not on your birthday. This celebration has
to clearly be labeled as a YOU celebration.
14. This whole in your
body, be present task takes practice. It’s not easy. Some days are challenging
and nonrefundable and require caffeine and extra patience. In fact you may read
this on Thursday and be stoked! You may then turn around and read this on
Friday and feel like it’s an infomercial for comfortable shoes or a hot cheeto
diet and that’s okay. It means you are alive. You are in observation mode.
15. Try it for three
days straight and journal about how you feel. Feel free to try these numbers
1-14 out of order.
