Ripping Off the Scab

While I was looking for something else today, I came across my notebook that I had used while working on my Masters. As I leafed through it, I began to cry. That tiny nondescript notebook was a reminder of what I hadn’t completed. While I did walk across the stage to accept my degree, it wasn’t the degree that I had imagined I would accept. I also cried because of the pain that I read behind the words. Not the girls’ pain but my pain, the ache that I had carried with me, held close to me. The anger that made my bones brittle.

“I am having difficulties writing about body and space. I feel like throwing the whole thigs away, walking away from it. Bury my head, my body and disappear.

I feel like I am being held together by tiny webs – I expect to see hairline cracks all over my body, like clay when it has no more water left. One quick step and I’ll fall into a heap of dust. Pieces too small to be put back together. Broken beyond repair. The heat of my anger evaporating my remains. I want to cut into my shin – peel back the top layers – expose the blood, membranes and bones beneath. Feel the rush of pain – the pieces of flesh underneath my nails. The cakiness of blood on my shin, the fresh running blood underneath. I want to tear it open again and again. I want to scream. I want to hit. I want to break down the walls. I can see myself through them – throwing myself against the walls. I can feel the screams, see my mouth open but I can’t hear them. I watch as my body, my hands slide down the wall over and over again. I watch and then I think ‘good girls don’t yell.’”

I read this and realise just how much it hurt to force myself to be continually thinking about girls, body, space, place and identity. How often when I read the literature and the studies I would feel sick. Looking back now, I should have changed my focus. My gaze should have shifted to me rather than an external analysis. At the time, that felt too self-centered, too egotistical.

Ultimately, I did write about myself and my experience researching and writing:

I was eleven when I was sexually abused by my softball coach. For the next two decades my body remembered what my mind chose to forget. I still can not remember fully what happened. All I have is the image of the sun shining through the leaves hanging above the van, the taste of bile in the back of my throat, and the world becoming still. I remember when the other girls mentioned that the police had come to their house but I don’t remember talking to them. I don’t know at what moment I remembered, I can’t place the trigger. It’s as though I woke up one morning and it was just there. I would look at pictures from my childhood and search my younger self’s face to see if I could witness the change. It became painful to read or hear the stories of adolescent girls. How could I listen to other’s stories when I was having difficulties listening to my own? Each time I sat down to write, read, or listen, my stomach would clench, I’d feel the tears well up and I would turn away.

This is a story about my journey.
(“Pandora’s Box” 2006)

I haven’t opened the document since I sent it off. There are only two people who have read it – my advisor and my second. I don’t think that I did myself justice or the topic justice. It might be one of those things that I have to go back to and do it right.

Next Tuesday, I have a meeting with my advisor. I don’t think that I am finished this journey.

x365 – A Year Long Journey Through Your Life

In my time spent strolling randomly through the internet, I came across this, x365.  Since finding it, I have been mulling it over.  As I move through the day, I will find myself adding another person to the list.  I haven’t decided yet whether or not I will actually play this game.  Partly because as much as I say that I want to write essays when presented with the commitment to write 34 words a day I become panicky.  (Side note – this post is already at 105.)  I also don’t know how I feel about naming people.I would also have to include people that I don’t actually know and who are already dead or never actually lived which doesn’t really fit in with the rules but then I am not very good at following rules.

What it has been is a good exercise for my mind.  I like inner reflection.  I could spend hours inspecting my inside toes.  I have become better about not becoming bogged down in it.  On down days I do still have a tendency to dredge up some moment when I said said or did something stupid and poke at it continually all the while squirming.  It’s like playing “why are you hitting yourself” with myself.  I have managed to stay away from self-degradation, instead I have been re-tracing my steps.  Stopping at various rest stops or sign posts along the way, I am realising how much ‘place’ plays an important role.  For example, the Gallery Lounge, is pivotal in my life.  No Gallery Lounge no L, no A, no J and the list goes on.  In fact, the Gallery Lounge had far more influence on my life than any of the professors whose  classes I was missing while sitting in a booth.

If I do decide to do this, I will include it on another page.  It will also be open to people, real or imagined, alive or dead, met or unmet.  It will be open to places, songs, books and any other piece that has made me who I am today.  Look for it.

I write in the shower.  I also write in the car, walking, sitting on the bus and various other places.  The problem is that I am not writing it down physically and when I actually sit down to write it out – I am blocked.  I have always written this way.  My thesis was written and rewritten in my mind.  I would walk away from the computer so that I could get some writing done. So here is my attempt to write what I had already written this morning.

Today, I woke up to discover that I am not pregnant.  This is a good thing.  I didn’t think that I  was but my breast feeding body is not as regular as it used to be.   While I was in the shower I realised that I will never again look at menstruation as a curse or burden to bear.  Somewhere amongst the tissue and blood was a tiny possibility that could have become a reality.  My body felt different – heavier, solid, connected.  There was an ache that throbbed between my legs, pulsing its way up into my uterus where I could feel it expanding, pushing against its walls, searching for something that was no longer there.  I could feel my body pull itself in and then let go – faint echoes of contractions that still reverberate through my bones, carried through my body as a counter tempo to my heartbeat.

My hands moved, tracing the path of the beats as they moved under the surface of my skin.  They rested on my belly.  Its roundness – a reminder of what it once hid.  Tiny purple marks following its swell, tattoos that no artist with their ink could replicate, no symbol found on a wall could evoke the same rich, layered meaning.

I bowed my head in wonderment.  My tears caught by the upturned corners of my mouth spilled down and I gave thanks.