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April
14, 2006
Self-cannibalism, my body, and giving birth
to myself
I’m thinking about being alone. An independent
person. Why do I need to be attached to someone? Because I’ve
always been attached to someone. But I’ve also never been attached.
I’ve never felt a mother’s hand cup the top of my head
to feel the unimaginable fuzzy deerskin softness.
She should have, would have, loved me. I have to love myself.
I have to wrap my own palm over the soft spot on my head.
I wasn’t
wanted. I didn’t want to eat from her hand.
I need to write about my marriage. Ben hated my body. I wonder
if he really did. My big, smooth, round, beautiful body. I’ll
bet I was beautiful then. I’m sorry no one ever loved you,
body Alex. It’s cost you so much love. No wonder you’re
afraid of your body. He didn’t like to touch me. To see me.
He called my body repulsive. I was lying on our bed in the loft.
We were arguing. Shouting at each other. He climbed the ladder. I
know I was hurt. I know I was angry. I was explosively angry in those
days. Now I’m just as afraid of my anger as Bill is of his.
I don’t want him to know how angry I got. But I would get so
frustrated, because I was stuck in a terrible marriage. We loved
each other, but we couldn’t talk.
I’m as protective of Ben as I am of my mother. I was furious
with him, because I couldn’t tell him anything. He couldn’t
love me. It was a terrible marriage. He told me all the time that
I was an idiot, and I believed him so much that at one point I wondered
if I was retarded. Hideous, scarred, tortured. Like those tortured
virgin saints. My body was contorted. I loved him so much, and he
called me an idiot and he wouldn’t have sex with me. That
night, as I lay on the bed naked, he climbed the ladder to the
loft. As he balanced on the ladder, just his head showed above
the floor. His face was close to the palms of my feet. I lay on
the bed and looked into his eyes between my widespread legs. We
were shouting. He said he thought I was a lesbian, and then he
looked at my cunt, which was parted between my legs, and he told
me my body was repulsive. I completely agreed. Everyone agreed.
Everyone I loved. They always hated my body.
On the bus home from junior high, wearing a skirt that stopped
midthigh. The edge of the green vinyl seat was sharp, and it
bit into my thighs. A boy beside me looked at my legs and said, “Your legs are
really fat.” The dark scent of him. His pallor and tight
dark curls. He and I were both hated. The kids were all so mean.
That was the bad year. The school was an alien place.
How did my body feel then? I never loved my body. Is that
true? But have I ever hated it this much? It’s better when it’s
thinner. I need to get in touch with my body.
The hated saints. Why would anyone make them saints for
abusing themselves in the name of the Lord.
I protect Ben as I protect my mom. I protect whomever I love.
I protect myself from the truth of who they are. I conceal
that from myself. I’m afraid of the truth about the people I love.
I know how pathetic I sound, extolling the virtues of people I
love. When others, whose opinions I hold high, see obvious flaws
in the people I love.
Bill doesn’t want to get serious. And what’s worst is
that my embarrassment that he doesn’t want me more. But what
do I want?? Do I really see it as my fault that he doesn’t
want to live with me? That he sometimes wants to spend time with
other women. I deserve better than the way he treats me around the
waifs. It’s not right that I protect the people I love so they
won’t leave me. What do I want? Breathe. I protect the people
I love so they’ll seem cool to other people. Even when I see
their flaws, I pretend not to notice. Ben put me down in public,
but I protected him, so I didn’t look stupid. He made me look
foolish, but I couldn’t leave him because I believed I couldn’t
survive without him.
When I was twelve, I discovered boys. My first boyfriend
was Jay. He kissed me that night in the grass near the pond.
We taught each other how to love. After Jay, I always had
a boyfriend. If I didn’t
have a real one, I’d find one to admire from afar. I spent
all my time daydreaming about boys I loved, and enacting complicated
stories in my head. Endless serials that continued whenever I was
alone with my thoughts. In the car, at school, in bed before I slept.
The stories were always about me as a helpless girl, loved by the
boy I desired. They never ended. They threaded through my life like
a cord. I was always hurt or in some peril and rescued by loving
men. Didn’t anyone ever notice my lips moving along with
my stories when I was so far away.
I have to stop compromising with men. I have to
allow Bill to be who he is. He isn’t as into me as I want him to be, and that’s
just how it is. I need to be more on my own and make a life I love.
And this life is good, but I need to discover my body. What if being
in my body were more fun? What can I do with my body that’s
fun? Spin and twirl. My face tightens at the thought. Spin, roll,
move, bumble and fall down. I just thought about hurting my body.
Pinching it. Pulling it. Eating it like the cannibals I’ve
been reading about. I don’t want to eat anyone else. That’s
what no one understands. I want to eat myself. Reach into my warm,
skinful thigh and pull it from the bone. Raise it to my lips, bloody
warm and push it into my mouth. I want to devour myself. My body,
in strips and not in chunks. Warm and painless as pudding. No, it
would be like warm beef. Rare, warm and spicy, running down my chin,
onto my naked breasts, and into my ecstatic skin. Twirl my fingers
round my nipples. Gather my breasts into my hands. Raise my nipple
to my lips, it’s swollen with desire. I want to die for you.
Rip myself to shreds and sacrifice myself to you. I’m changing
places. Rub the juice and smear it into my skin.
I’m more than anyone knows. I’m honesty, intensity
and love. Amy called me forgiving.
I don’t want to hear about Bill’s life without me. I’m
intent on convincing everyone that he’s in love with me. He’s
as in love as he can be. I’m better than he is. I’m not
better in many ways. But I’m better than he is in many. I’m
loved by so many wonderful friends. Their love conveys me, they carry
me in their arms. I miss them. I’ve been so isolated of late.
I’ve been sick. I’m sure my body is trying to say something
to me about change. Think about how you feel. You need to be happy.
I was so happy… when? When Bill and I were… what? He
has his own agenda. I see what he wants. I see his eyes pass over
me. He looks at other women. I’m not Bill. I’m my own
fine woman. I’m a strong-bodied woman with a fierce mind
and creativity.
Sometimes I contract when I encounter others,
because I don’t
want to take up too much space. I don’t want to be more than
they are. Where do I want to go next? I need to see Bill as one of
my best friends. To release myself from the burden of his rejection,
because it isn’t part of me. His choices aren’t about
my not being good enough. They’re about him not being good
enough. He needs to be less important. I have to stop seeing myself
in the mirror of his eyes. I have to look at myself and decide what
it is I want. I’m tired of mismanaging my money. Why do I
do that? An identity I cling to of someone who is scattered. Am
I really scattered? I have enough to live on, but I need to portion
it out so I have enough to live on every month.
He doesn’t love me the way I’d love myself. I’d
devote myself to me. Be with me all the time. Make love to me every
day. Put kisses all over my body. Tell me that I’m beautiful.
Lick all my favorite places. I’d eat me. Lick me. Self cannibalism.
Why do I want to eat myself? To take up less room? To fill my belly?
To hurt myself? None of those sounds right. I want to eat myself
because I can eat myself. Guilt-free. Because I’m free of my
flesh. Of my body. I can always give birth to more. Give birth to
more of myself. Squat and push and see the flesh emerge. Not slick
with afterbirth, but strong and smooth and warm and furred, like
the top of a baby’s head. I want to squat and push and finally
give birth to myself. Free myself of this heavy body inside a body.
Release it. Be freed of it. Give birth to it and hold it in my hands.
Hold it close and tight. A squirming, squealing infant. Hold it in
my arms, tight against my breasts, breathe the warm fleshy smell
of its head. Squirmy, beautiful, infant baby flesh. This baby flesh
is me. Big baby body. Still confusing those words. I want to give
birth to my body. See the head emerge between my legs. Make Ben watch
from the top of the ladder. What would his eyes look like as he watched
me give birth to me? His mother told him pussies were dirty, soiled,
diseased. That giving birth is ugly. Nobody liked watching birth
on TV at his house. He said he’d give me oral sex after I
lost weight, but I lost the weight, and nothing got any better.
I’d dress up for Ben. Bathe for an hour in scented water. Pull
on stockings and fasten them with garters. Brush my hair until it
shone. Scent my body, wear sexy dresses. Cook an elaborate dinner
and wait for him to come home. He walk in and see my eyes alight
and a little bit crazy. And he’d say, “Oh, Alex, not
now. Oh Jesus, not now. Don’t do this to me now.” He
cured me of the habit, but it took a lot of tries.
REJECTION. NO, I DON’T LOVE YOUR BODY EITHER. I love you, but
I don’t love your body. Nobody ever loved my body. Nobody has
ever loved my body. Bill… never says he loves my body. I need
to ask him if he loves my body, but I’m afraid to ask. I need
to pull my heart in closer. My heart is extended out to him too far.
I’m sticking out too far and leaving myself too vulnerable.
I need to operate from a place without fear. I’m fearful of
him. I need to tell him that. I know he could crush my heart. He
did crush my heart. It was terrible, but I lived, but I’ve
already forgotten how I lived. What do I fear? That he’ll
find someone else? Is he afraid of that? No. I need to work on
independence. Be my own person. Discover who I am. Stop trying
to inhabit his skin. Stop being so goddamn vigilant.
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