6:25 p.m. - 02/13/02
flowerchord.
I'm feeling barefooted and simplistic. I want to walk in summer grass and dance to guitar music on someone else's porch. I want to sway out of my inhibition, and let my body re-recognize itself. Once upon a time, we were not fashioned by the fashion industry, mastered by the media. Once upon a time I understood that there being enough of my body for someone to hold it was a good thing, and my arms being strong enough to keep them safely inside was good as well. I want to hand out socialist/ anarchist readings on sidewalk corners; I want to break the right rules, and rebel against reason *for* reason. I want to be brave.
I cut my own hair today. I'm not sure what it was about, this somewhat unprecedented need to be riskful and outside typical social regulation. Perhaps I wanted to remind myself that my body is something to be played with, adorned, celebrated, and used. I've spent so many years pressing down the frizz in my hair, pushing it behind my ear and out again, trying desperately to get it to be invisible (i.e. presentable) and there was something in me today that just said, "those strands are growing heavy with the weight of other people's eyes; cut yourself free from the ties they've convinced you to wear"...so I took a small purple scissors, the type you would find in a fifth grader's pencil case, and cut my curls to my chin, so I look lovely, spontaneous, and boyish again.
Sometimes I feel like a boi trying to be a girl. It's odd; it isn't as if I'm trans or anything - more like, if one were to look at it literally, that I am a trannygirl. It's odd; I'm not really connected to my boyness (boys are scary) but...there's something in me that wants to defy gender, and perhaps that needs to. Something in me that says, let them guess and wonder and *ask* so that you may find out the answers lingering inside.
It's amazing what sensations go through you when you walk into the woods with a small bowl of your own hair and let the wisps fly from your fingers to the wind. There is something freeing about knowing that your hair is now amid the same ground as the fur of animals, the feathers of birds...I felt home when I was in the woods with my hair, giving it back to bird's nests and the soil I crave. I think it's sad we don't acquaint ourselves with the dirt until after the feeling has abandoned our bodies. I'm beginning to understand that I have abandoned my body as well; long before I developed this disorder, I abandoned her. I minimized her, I told her she was not as lovely nor as important as the spiritual/soul girl, the intellect/brain girl, or the sensate/heart girl. I didn't let her abilities touch me. This is the girl whose fingers blister when she touches fire. This is the girl whose tastebuds force forward and contract with pleasure. This is the girl who knows what she wants before heart or brain can make sense of it- the girl who has pulled back from the fire before the brain realizes the heat is threatening.
This is a girl of impulses, of desires, of childhood freedoms, and adult wisdom. This is a girl who honors that the lake has lived here far longer than she can imagine living, and at the same time is too busy letting it tickle her toes to bother with philosophy. She is a child and a crone; she is muscle and expression ... She is warm within her cellulite, and she has been taught to punish herself for it. I have taught her this. The messages of others have only gotten through because I allowed them to get through, because I put her on the back burner, my body, myself. I let her all but perish, and now when I touch her it is with the cautious interest of a repentent mother.
Her eyes are my eyes and her skin is my skin. I want her to teach me all of the wisdoms she's been forced to withhold, and I want to earn her trust once again. I want to do what she tells me I will enjoy, without shaming her.
I want to be free; I want to let her open like a chrysalis. She has turned herself into a cage; I want to fill her with breath and let her out again...
That was a tangent I did not expect to go on. I expected to talk about how I had cut my own hair, yes, and then I expected to go onto the realities of the day - my wondering if my mother pushing me in my recovery parallels other mothers pushing their children in school, in sports, in ballet...I want very much to have something of my own, and it makes sense that since this is near all I have, her being such a large part of it would feel threatening. I expected to talk about that, and about the girl on the "parental ambition" special who looked so much like Tracy (in the eyes; she was much younger) and I wondered if there was a mark for eating disorder on her forehead; if this is a foreseeable reality engrained in the survivors. I wanted to take her away and help her get through to the other side without ending up in the middle. I wanted to help her get out before she got in.
I like myself alright today...I don't adore her; I don't revel in my own flawlessness by any means, but I just feel a bit more on the right track than I have. Even as I say that it fades; it will fade...but if I wait, I guess it will return again. I want to be a new girl, and I have to discover the old one before that can ever be possible.
I listen to too much folk music...
chord
"we'd provide forums we'd all speak out we'd all be heard we'd all feel seen/ we'd rise post-obstacle more defined more grateful we would heal be humbled/ and be unstoppable we'd hold close and let go and know when to do which we'd/ release and disarm and stand up and feel safe/ this is utopia this is my utopia..."
-alanis/m "utopia"
�
�
