When I am anxious, and when I am calm, I pick away bits of skin from my thumbs, fingers, any spot ripe for folding and scraping and ripping and tearing. Any accessible bit of dermis should lie sliced by my nails, at my command. Bit after bit, until the superficial parts are stripped to lay pink flesh bare, meeting nail upon tooth upon nail, parts of myself come free. I seldom reflect on the nature of it--such is a habit. Yet surely, whether conscious or not, I rip until the sweet crimson underneath is loosed and flows from the comfort zones out to embarrass me once more. And so leaving it be for a few days, another site is chosen and the ritual began again.
What is not torn remains pink, shiny, and soft, newly aerated flesh. It is raw, with few undulations, not yet having met the rough realities yet laid in front of it. I subject them to cruelty. For what I know is that cruelty builds supple, thick flesh and hard skin. It is calloused and resistant to external forces. It knows its purpose for it does not question nor has the capacity to alter its trajectory. Only the mind knows. And yet, this skin too will shed, rip, tear, and be peeled back to reveal reddish nectar. None are resistant to change.
The process is by its nature menial and absurd and ineffectual. But the process itself somehow offers a mental haven away from the steaming gears of the mind. A small grounding pain either validates the perceived external threats or is a mere small, sidelining distraction that is more concretely controlled. The task is surely meaningless in its ending but meaningful through its process.
When I see others under the same mental spell, for them I weep, but I also feel kinship, as someone else too is locked into a menial, temporally stunted form of self-assurance and calm. I would never wish it on another, but like two caged animals, I understand.
And with that, there are countless things in this life I do not understand. Outside exists an abundance of experiences, unique, nuanced, or shared, and lived 100-times over, and I will never live nor exist to see even a minute fraction of it. This is a base truth that we all face.
Yet, this is all valid and as should be. Despite it all, we grasp for a semblance of shared experiences, fawn over the diverse experiences of our companions, and somehow try to navigate through life, collecting lessons and wisdom as we grow. In each other a lifetime of emotion, experience, teachings, ambitions, blessings and curses, love and hate, privilege and otherwise--truly, how could one ever think her own life superior to one another, or deserving of more than another, or insular and non-overlapping with her community. How could one ever believe herself to be above the bulk of humanity around her? To cast away that connection? To ignite that ego, let it run free, allow it some unbridled justification for its own gluttony? There are few stories more sad, than one of disconnect from her family, her community, her humanity at large.
I will never tire of listening to those experiences of others, nor providing aid when and where I can. No greater joy, in my mind, can be achieved above spreading joy, healing, and fostering kinship.
And with my ripped flesh, blood seeping into my hands, I wonder if it would be better some other way. What I subject myself too--is there some other way? Should I allow the skin to callous over, thicken and become resistant to all elements? I could chose to relent. In an odd sense, restraining myself from destroying is somehow a larger wall to scale than continuing the act. Inaction is supposedly an easier pit to fall into--clearly not always. The alternative though, is to continue the cycle of tearing, letting, closing, ad nauseam. For some reason I continually chose the latter. It seems a more natural state to exist in as self destructive as it may be. What started as a calming notion became a pointless impulse, and is now a comfortable norm. When I open new wounds, I never doubt they will close, they always have, they always will. It was never questioned. What I now know, is that even with all the distractions in the world, wounds close but do not leave. Scarring over the same spot, time after time, surely hides the scar but makes bare the wound yet again. Allowing it to heal reveals the scar. And so here we are.
I am comfortable with my scars, to an extent. So then, am I really okay with any of it? What I have come to accept, is being bare, exposed, raw. I don't mind what that entails, and I certainly rather be malleable than unchanging. If growing pains come with it, if tearing ensues, I will survive it as I have before. A mind trapped in its own cycle of destruction and reconstruction knows the floorplan by heart, but evidently not enough to boot the guy with the sledgehammer. I just wish my contractor had found some peaceful way to go about it, but then again, it remains uncertain what is in flux, what is inscribed, and what is entirely beyond all comprehension. What I can do now is only come to accept and grow from my circumstances, and decorate the walls of my mind.
I'm sure the sores do not suit aesthetics, but at present they comprise part of me, and that's not something I'm so eager to hate, nor in a rush to change. Growth happens at one's own pace, not any other normal or societally prescribed pace. I don't know where the road leads, but I do control the legs that take me there.
A recent note scribbled on rice paper:
"
I'm living
I'm learning
I will live
I will learn.
That is enough.
"
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