It’s been a long ongoing war between my body and myself, a long series of arguments, break-ups and misunderstandings, lack of tolerance and compassion from both sides. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to work with it, alongside it, never really saw it as a tool but instead, have always dragged it like a dead weight, an awkward burden, ill-adapted, imperfect, limited, limiting. It has always been a source of frustration and pain -seemingly so pointless and unfair-, an indelible reminder of my limited time in this world, of my unstoppable decay. This body, nothing more than a prison, a curse, something which would eventually be the end of me, something which would not let me be to the extent my mind desires to be.
My enemy. I remember lying in bed at night as a young girl with the feeling of lying inside a corpse, my arms carefully resting on either side of my torso so as not to be in contact with any bones which would remind me that all this would one day be rotting in the ground. I recall the long lasting impossibility for me to look at my own x-rays and see my skull, my teeth, the grinning face of my future death. I recall the nocturnal panic from feeling so much of flesh and bones, hearing my heartbeat and feeling my lungs fill and empty themselves, my blood rushing through my veins and keeping the flesh warm, the painstaking softness of my skin, all this so overwhelmingly fragile, temporary, so unbearably vulnerable.
My enemy. Becoming a woman was a traumatic experience and I’ll never be quite sure whether I’ve truly accepted this cross I was given to bear. The physiological changes, the blood, the pain, so unfair, so overwhelming. The social changes, the sudden importance of appearance, the new rules of the game, a new identity, imposed and heavy. New limitations, new shame, new self-esteem or damage to it.
My enemy. When my mind was breaking down, overheating, bubbling to the rim with newly-discovered powers and their infinite possibilities but I was stuck in this body of heavy bones and weak muscles, imperfect tongue and breath and eyes. War or perverted team spirit? In self harming, my body coming to rescue the mind caught in a self-destruction mode in its desire of annihilation, and dragging it back to reality through pain, an irrefutable anchor to the here and now, a calling for compassion and nursing by exposing its vulnerability in blood and broken skin.
My body. This familiar and alarming stranger which follows me everywhere, the experience of which I am never quite sure. So close, so me, and yet so unfamiliar, unknown, so often working against me. My body, the common element in the way of all that matters: me, the others and time. My body, such an absurdity in the face of the mind and the world, a puppet which my mind observes with a sinking feeling through the keyholes of my eyes, watching it fall and ruin everything, a pathetic show of an ever-failing attempt to live, to meet the other, to inhabit this world.
