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Tuesday
Jun152010
Refined By The Fire
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
I do all my best thinking in the shower. The sound of the water drowns out distractions and lets my mind wander as it will.
A couple of days ago, I was doing just that. I was busy wasting all kinds of water, watching it course down over my torso and around my bellybutton, and I got that strange feeling you get when something is dawning on you, and you look up and to the left and try not to lose the thread before it hits you.
And then I got an eyeful of water.
But, after I rubbed the water out of my eye, the feeling was still there, and, miraculously, it finally hit me: As we age, as our bodies change with babies and illness and surgeries and years and whatnot, we start to view them as remnants of our former selves rather than whole in their present states. We start to view our bodies as what remains from some former, better versions of them.
I have never been fond of my body. I don't mean that I have never liked it aesthetically; I mean its very existence has been bothersome. These meat suits we wear are awfully uncomfortable and demanding and prone to becoming even moreso over time. They get dirty easily and injured easily and create a lot of mess. To me, they've always seemed like pretty awful vessels to have to ferry ourselves around in for decades on end.
And then there's the sex and gender thing, which just throws a whole extra wrench into the works.
And then I also had to go and get cervical cancer and have a hysterectomy three years ago, which, while managing to save me from cancer, also managed to further screw with my already messy sense of physical coherence.
I realized that, since then, I have been subconsciously thinking of my body as the thing that remains, as though the essential and true parts of some better and younger self were gone from me. Essentially, I have been subconsciously believing that I am akin to garbage, that I am leftovers, that I am merely what remains from all that has been stripped from me over the years through the many trials that life has had to offer.
This realization led to a second, and much more important realization. There is no ideal version of our physical selves that has ever, or will ever, exist. I was no more ideal at 7 or 18 or 31 than I am now. There is no measuring stick to measure how this particular version of Schmutzie is faring against any other versions of Schmutzie. There is only this one now, this one me. The earlier versions of me — the one who was yet to be molested, the one who was yet to experience suicidal depression, the one who was yet to get cancer — are not better or more whole. They are merely different. My previous incarnations did not possess some aura of wholeness that was taken away.
I am not less good or less whole for the negative things that have happened to me.
I am changed.
We cannot necessarily alter the series of events that brings us to certain points of change, but once those things have occurred, once we have been through the fire, that is when we have possibility restored, that is when we can choose what that change will become in us. We are given such great opportunity to grow and become within ourselves in the aftermath of negative events, and it is a terrible thing to lose any of that because of the false belief that the best in any of us has been worn away.
My body is not a degraded and leftover thing. I may not fully embrace it, and it might still be a weighty meat suit to me, but it is whole. It is what it is. It belongs to no other self but me, the self who bore it through these times to find a new whole and to be spurred on to discover what that means.
Difficult times are the fire by which I am refined, and I have found my mettle in it.
A couple of days ago, I was doing just that. I was busy wasting all kinds of water, watching it course down over my torso and around my bellybutton, and I got that strange feeling you get when something is dawning on you, and you look up and to the left and try not to lose the thread before it hits you.
And then I got an eyeful of water.
But, after I rubbed the water out of my eye, the feeling was still there, and, miraculously, it finally hit me: As we age, as our bodies change with babies and illness and surgeries and years and whatnot, we start to view them as remnants of our former selves rather than whole in their present states. We start to view our bodies as what remains from some former, better versions of them.
I have never been fond of my body. I don't mean that I have never liked it aesthetically; I mean its very existence has been bothersome. These meat suits we wear are awfully uncomfortable and demanding and prone to becoming even moreso over time. They get dirty easily and injured easily and create a lot of mess. To me, they've always seemed like pretty awful vessels to have to ferry ourselves around in for decades on end.
And then there's the sex and gender thing, which just throws a whole extra wrench into the works.
And then I also had to go and get cervical cancer and have a hysterectomy three years ago, which, while managing to save me from cancer, also managed to further screw with my already messy sense of physical coherence.
I realized that, since then, I have been subconsciously thinking of my body as the thing that remains, as though the essential and true parts of some better and younger self were gone from me. Essentially, I have been subconsciously believing that I am akin to garbage, that I am leftovers, that I am merely what remains from all that has been stripped from me over the years through the many trials that life has had to offer.
This realization led to a second, and much more important realization. There is no ideal version of our physical selves that has ever, or will ever, exist. I was no more ideal at 7 or 18 or 31 than I am now. There is no measuring stick to measure how this particular version of Schmutzie is faring against any other versions of Schmutzie. There is only this one now, this one me. The earlier versions of me — the one who was yet to be molested, the one who was yet to experience suicidal depression, the one who was yet to get cancer — are not better or more whole. They are merely different. My previous incarnations did not possess some aura of wholeness that was taken away.
I am not less good or less whole for the negative things that have happened to me.
I am changed.
We cannot necessarily alter the series of events that brings us to certain points of change, but once those things have occurred, once we have been through the fire, that is when we have possibility restored, that is when we can choose what that change will become in us. We are given such great opportunity to grow and become within ourselves in the aftermath of negative events, and it is a terrible thing to lose any of that because of the false belief that the best in any of us has been worn away.
My body is not a degraded and leftover thing. I may not fully embrace it, and it might still be a weighty meat suit to me, but it is whole. It is what it is. It belongs to no other self but me, the self who bore it through these times to find a new whole and to be spurred on to discover what that means.
Difficult times are the fire by which I am refined, and I have found my mettle in it.
Reader Comments (24)
And the flesh became word. Naked. Beautiful. Profound.
Thank you.
yes. in fact, the more it has carried me through, the more i feel more protective of my meat suit...which is not exactly love, but at least not loathing, not denial or rejection based on some abstract category or box it did not fit.
for myself, at least, i don't even like the word "whole." the implications are just one more thing to constantly measure myself against.
this was beautiful.
This took my breath. I have this strange relationship with my body as of late. I feel the most beautiful I have ever felt. I feel the most sexual. Yet, I feel trapped in that. I have all this new power and yet I feel like every single choice my body has ever needed to make, lovers, children, ect. has been made. I know this is not the case. I know that my body is for more than sex and child-bearing...but I grieve anyway, even as I celebrate this skin. Strange indeed.
Beautiful post. I've been thinking along this lines myself lately but you have phrased it so much eloquently.
Loved this. LOVE.
Beautiful (you and your words).
I also get a little hypnotized every time I take a shower. I feel bad about wasting water, so every few days I'll try to get done in under 10 minutes, but I always find myself coming back from wherever my mind wandered.
Amazing.
This is the most beautiful piece of writing on body awareness that I have ever, ever read.
Thank you for sharing it with us, wow.
Breathtaking. Beautiful. Heartwrenching, too. Do it again!
I think you and I have been tapping into a similar keg: http://irishgumbo.blogspot.com/2009/04/we-are-sometimes-lemons.html
This is beautiful. Just beautiful.
Messed up belly button or not,
I think you are HOT.
This was an amazingly beautiful post.
One I really really really needed.
Thank you
(contented sigh)
What Jett said.
Garbage, leftovers -- kind of how I've been allowing myself to feel as a woman without children very close to 40.
And no, you're right. It's not true. But it's easy to feel that way. Good words, here. Such good words.
Every time I come here I leave feeling better than before. The honesty and wisdom behind your words cuts through to my core. I spend so much time thinking there's no hope, but there is when I take the time to listen. Your words are beautiful. A true reflection of you.
Wow. What a sad and beautiful discovery, and I completely understand that feeling.
Thank you for sharing your freshly washed thoughts.
Oh. This is beautiful. I felt my whole vision/version of mySelf shift while reading. Thank you. And meat suit? I have found a new phrase to love. Yum. ;)
Wow, what an epiphany! This is such an articulate and insightful post and gives me a lot of food for thought. I just celebrated my 40th and am having a harder time digesting that idea than I thought I would, for many of the very same reasons you mentioned! Thanks, Schmutzie...
Yes.
Beautiful.
In the fire now and, good god, I needed this. Beautiful.
At age 51 I look back at old photos of my younger body and wonder why I ever felt it was imperfect. I was too critical then, and I'm still too critical. However, I often thank my body for all that it has done (its good health, its beauty, the sexual pleasure, the children who are the best things I've ever done); I'm very grateful to it.
At the very least, bodies carry our precious brains around. That in and of itself is worth having a "meat suit." It give our heads the wings to fly, so to speak.
Love this.
Absolutely lovely post.
Who needs perfect, anyways?
Wow, wow, wow. Well said.