Twenty Things

Thirty Four Mate

I think I’m injury-prone because I’m injured again.

Every few months an IBS bout will knock me out and I’ll pull my neck or back (never both, thank god) and I’ll be incapable of doing anything for a few days. It’s funny and embarrassing by the fourth day when I can finally laugh… but most importantly… cry (which I love doing) again… without my lungs punching at the side of my ribs with a rough embrace. Bodies are so fickle and I find myself wondering if mine will ever give me any real salvation. If I will ever feel pleasure when I look at myself in the mirror. For the last few years, that’s been a devotional prayer, something I have longed and attempted to do… but bodies are bodies are bodies and why do they keep the score when we want them to forget?

I keep thinking I’m finishing a cycle, ending a loop on the IBS, that I’ve found some miracle cure and I won’t get sick anymore… I know this is steeped in ableism, a quick fix, but I’m tired of feeling outside of myself and I keep wondering what I’m doing to hold myself back. How am I failing myself, I keep asking. I don’t think I have answers, but I do know that some days are easier than others, and there are moments in time when I do feel in sync, finally, with myself. Where I’m alive and I can feel it through my skin. I want to know what desire feels like, I feel there is still so much I don’t know. A few weekends ago I went to see the delicious new Ira Sachs film, Passages, with my partner and my friend Alês. While being in the rapture of cinema, like watching an old French classic, I remembered how movies have always been the salve for me. Especially with people I love. It was the perfect little treat to the tedium of body pain and what could be misread as a body’s failure. But these days I cherish the moments I don’t turn on myself, and I am witnessing those moments more, the moments I stop the harsh internal monologue and give my sweet, broken, and hurt body a moment of comfort in this sick, dark world.