Free-Writing Friday: The Thing About My Body Is / Trigger Warning

This is a free-write assigned in a writing workshop with Nancy Slonim-Aronie and the starting sentence was, “The thing about my body is…”

My body says, “Pay attention” and “Look away” using the same volume, tone and pitch. If I listen to one part I’m disobeying the other.

We’re still making up from a fight neither one of us caused.

I have blamed my body for far too long for every accident, incident and assault. Staring with suspicion, the way one looks at a dead animal appearing on a sandy beach – curiosity and disgust. Part of me wants to turn over the dead bird with the broken neck and featherless body and another part wants to walk away and pretend I didn’t see.

Instead, with a stick and a clam shell, I try to rearrange the bones. I fear Mother Nature will rise up in a wild dance of magic causing the dead bird to fly into my face so I keep some distance as I poke.

My body didn’t intend to cause injury. Maybe it is the power of fiction that turns truth into stories, the ones I heard as a girl, confirmed by the medical reports I sent away for which read: “Mother states child fell thirty feet.” I don’t remember falling. I’ve heard various versions: I fell from the porch, the roof, the top of the garage. I was not yet two. Did I crawl, slip or try to fly? Was I hurled in anger? Toddlers don’t usually jump.

My mother says when I fell and hit I didn’t cry and my silence was her longest run down the stairs. Like as at birth there are times when quiet is unwelcome and foreboding. I don’t remember yet the repetitive dream of childhood was a free-fall in a black hole. I always awoke with heart pounding before I hit.

Another time, I fell out of a moving car. I was sitting atop some suitcases by the window seat in the days before buckles and carseats or making sure the door is closed when your child is a passenger. A corner was rounded with my first step-father at the wheel and I flew out of the car and onto the street.

“You bounced,” is what I’ve been told and“good thing you were so fat.” Everyone laughs still. So do I. But I wonder now if my child self know what was coming.

Was I a prisoner taking the metal end of a spoon to cement trying to dig an escape with no idea what destination I was heading for? Did I know it would be dangerous to remain still?

When you leap the net is supposed to appear. Is that not true for children or falling?

Or was I just too stupid to shut the door tight and too blind to know I would fall if I stepped off a porch?

I love scary rides at amusement parks but I do not like fast-moving automobiles. You will always find me in the driver’s seat or with eyes on the road.

In beds, with hands older, there was too much commotion. I evaporated into bunk bed metal coils, purple and white sheets and the mattress torn in the middle where the dog ripped at the center to give birth to puppies. Animals bled and gave birth but I died in that space.

Expert I became at ignoring this body starting with pee and moving on to bruising. It’s not anemia or a failure clot properly. It’s the way I walk into corners of beds and tables and use my body as a prop to lift furniture. My legs wear the marks of my disregard. On a beach, it seems everyone notices the bruises, calling my carelessness to my attention. I am the neglectful parent to my own skin when pain and punishment could be averted but I fail to move and still make myself a target instead.

The cycle breaks on many levels but still holds center in the psyche. The thing about this body is it has been begging for my loving caress, appreciation and more timely responses.

I am old enough now and know the part of me saying “look away” was just coping and frightened. The part of me and anyone saying “pay attention” is always telling the truth.