Breach

The sudden intimacy of a new friend. To let someone in. The most terrifying thing. Not because I fear the change or the joy therepromised. But because I fear my own inability to set boundaries. To stop myself falling. To hold myself back from the brink. To give myself permission to rest, or sleep, or be alone. Drenched in metaphysical blood is a child-part of me that would rather send the world down into the crucible of hell than sacrifice its grasp on a connection. Even unto stifling. The same old patterns. You’ve seen this movie before. Say no when you want to say no. Keep your reserves. Do not tax yourself. No love should ever tax you. Love should refill your damn old coffers.

Dara

It’s Complicated

I’ve said it before, but I wish I could set my relationship status on Facebook to say “it’s complicated with myself.”

I feel like I’ve been bullied, belittled and bossed around my entire life, but never more than by my own hand. I feel like I have to do this to survive, to keep putting my Normal mask on every day. Even when life is good, it’s full of self-abuse and depression, disconnection and self-hate. I’m rarely present with myself or others; I make so few true connections, and I do not maintain them. Rather, I hide, because I’m in too much turmoil and pain to be seen for who I really am.

I become more and more aware of my body and my struggles with embodiment — and yet, my body seems in worse shape than ever it was. I keep telling myself there is a corner that I will soon turn, but I am also recognizing the way I cling to that piece of self-hype for dear life.

I feel like I need some kind of cold-water shock to my life, some kind of exposure therapy where I have no choice but to rely on my body, to be immersed in it, to trust it, to listen to it, to run and jump and dance and fly. But that life is just so far away from what I am living now. I want some strong and capable hand to take my hand, to lead me away from the injuries and abuse of my childhood, to lead me towards agency and capability, towards body-confidence and actualization.

More than anything I want to proceed with joy as my onus. Not fear and not pain. So at least there’s that; at least there’s knowing who I am. And knowing what I want.

All I really want is love. I want it to emanate from myself, I want to give it to myself and then radiate it outwards. At least I know what I want.

Dara

Bon Iver

I took myself out to see Bon Iver last night and was quite glad I did. Concerts are a challenging space for the bodily challenged, but the thrill and catharsis of the music is what makes it all worthwhile. I was really able to let myself relax my body and absorb the show, and that was a great relief to me. For the first half hour or so I was wound up very tightly, partly because I had just gotten off a particularly dicey work week, but I decided to let my hair down (metaphorically) and just enjoy the music and move however my body wanted to, and that was the most wonderful gift I could have given myself. The rest of the week had been really bad as far as bodily things went, and it was nice to have this one bright spot to put everything back in perspective. Going into the weekend I’m going to focus on cleaning up my space and getting myself feeling more prepared and oriented for whatever challenges the coming weeks can throw at me.

Dara

Accountability

I’m starting to take on a deeper appreciation of the connection between embodiment and accountability. I’m finding I need to have a sense of accountability to myself. Before my sister was born, I was an only child and seriously ill a lot of the time. From a time before memory I got used to my parents taking care of my physical state, especially since it involved a lot of pain. That symbiosis continued and never really stopped. I had to sever those ties myself. Now I’m discovering my sense of accountability to myself, which was so long lacking due to the circumstances. I simply never had to learn how to rely on myself for anything, and that’s an enfeebling force for a young person.

This deeper appreciation of those circumstances also puts me in touch with more uncomfortable feelings about wealth, privilege and the amount of ‘emotional space’ I took up in my family system, which became unbearable for everyone. I always made my pain the center of attention in whatever scenario. My family was at a loss for how to deal with me, but so was I. I wish I’d known better, and yet I’m firmly of the belief that you can’t fix the past without healing your present. There’s a certain level of regret and discomfort that accompanies me as I process this reality of my younger life.

So I think with a gentle hand I need to give myself a kind of exposure therapy, with a mind to being accountable for my body and my health. I need to learn how to tolerate bodily sensations and emotions without turning to self-abusive behaviors or enthusiastically assigning responsibility for myself to others. I feel grateful for this self-discovery and eager to walk the road ahead.

Dara

Dug from an old store of poems

Don’t Rape

From my personal perspective, the fundamental problem of rape culture, that culture which blames the victims of sex crime instead of the perpetrators, which places the emphasis on Don’t Get Raped rather than Don’t Rape, is that the sexual power-holders of the society are taught from birth that the unempowered are to be used to satisfy those urges which they are never taught to reconcile with, only to disown and seek solutions for in the use of others. Of course, generally this powered/unempowered split falls along the line between men and women, our society being as patriarchal and avowedly anti-female as it is.

I’ve heard it said that the ‘Don’t Get Raped’ idea utterly infantilizes men, and I agree that it does, much like the mandatory burqas of certain deeply-broken patriarchies of the Middle East. I think this disowning of the male gaze is in itself an act of violation, because it assigns responsibility for the internal forces of one gender wholly to the other, en masse, without any consent. Whether in the U.S. or Afghanistan, women must bear to some degree the accumulated weight of the disowned male sexuality. I find this wholly distasteful, and lately I’ve been watching movies and TV shows and realizing that in our mass entertainment this disowning of the sexual shadow still looms large. It certainly sours the taste of most entertainment products.

I am a man and I grew up in a culture in which women were taught always to be subservient to the needs and urges of men. I have seen the horrible damage and warped morality caused by this framework. But I have also seen my family emerge as one of strong women, survivors, often the breadwinners and moral centers of their families. And from my first-hand experience with a system in which men are coddled and served and women support them, I have to conclude that owning the body, the sexual urge, the shadow, is the only way forward. Men should no longer be culturally, societally and especially legally permitted to use others for their own physical needs. I have long felt that there is a deep and fundamental thorn in the paw of masculinity in general, a self-infantilization that has destroyed its character. As I see strong currents of feminist and queer and mental health-positive movements rising to take back right and wrong, I can’t help but wonder if there should not also be a movement of men who resolve to own the body and the sexual totality that men have so long disowned, men who prove that they are strong not because of male privilege, but because they have relinquished it.

Dara

Birthday

It’s my birthday! it’s interesting, this day used to mean something so different to me. It seemed the one day of the year where I could assume the childlike position of bubbling out of myself and expecting everyone around me to catch me and hold my energy. There’s that obligation, that contract of the birthday.

But I’m older now, and though I still have those feelings, they sort of surge up and break harmlessly on my internal shores. When people acknowledge me, I respectfully share the warmth they extend to me, and then I move on. It’s a strange thing. One makes a lot of mistakes each day. I made some this week. But you self-reflect, you inhabit your Process, you slowly see around the bends and corners of yourself into new shadow nooks and blind spots, and you begin to fill your existence with sight and awareness. I hope to approach this coming day, with all of its sure joys and challenges, like any other day: armed to the teeth with effortless grace and serenity.

Dara

Twenty-something

I just had this weird realization that I’m turning 27 tomorrow. I hadn’t thought about it all week, but most of the ‘something’ in my twenty-something experience has passed, and boy has it been interesting. I wouldn’t trade it for anything because I’m remarkably content with my current lot. I think I’ve tapped into a spiritual vein of life that people generally don’t hear the rush of underfoot until they’re older — but conversely, I’ve missed out on a lot of things particular to people my age, who are simultaneously in youth and adulthood. I suppose that’s one of the symptoms of disembodiment. It’s difficult to play in a field where most have a functional comfort with their physical frames.

But I’m slowly coming into that capacity. And I sense that the satisfaction of having done so will never, ever be lost on me. I have a feeling I will be grateful for my body and my health for a long time.

Dara

Kung Fu Panda

You are under no obligation to take seriously this post about the Kung Fu Panda films and their positive depictions of body image, eating disorders, and negotiating childhood trauma. Of course all of these are presented in very simple narrative terms, but the movies take such a relentlessly positive stance towards the self-esteem and worth of its overweight, overeating main character that I can’t help but wish I’d had them around when I was a kid.

In the first film, I appreciate the way Po’s (the titular Panda) tendency to overeat when upset is recognized by his masters and, though there are some initial wincing reactions to his slovenliness and gluttony, it’s eventually exactly what allows him to succeed: channeling the emotional energy that he devotes so intently to food into the expression of the body, by using food as a training tool. In my humble and non-professional opinion this is an excellent model for raising healthy body awareness in cases of food abuse.

In the second film, Po begins to have flashbacks to his childhood, when his parents were driven away from their village and killed by an evil figure who is also the villain of the piece. I really appreciated that they explicitly connected Po’s overeating and sense of displacement in the world to this event. For a children’s film, it’s remarkably deft in its depiction of post-traumatic stress.

I believe the “kung fu” the film is really referring to in all of its training and combat scenes is an internal one. Repeatedly the films create an equivalency between self-worth and inner harmony and winning the day and defeating the villains, who themselves seem to stand in for personal feelings of inferiority and physical inadequacy (Tai Lung in the first film) and the gargantuan spectre of unresolved childhood trauma (Lord Shen in the second film). Also, nice work casting Ian McShane and Gary Oldman, respectively. Along with Dustin Hoffman and Angelina Jolie, these films are a feast of deep and robust voices. Jack Black, on the other hand, balances these deeper voices out with his trademark range and versatile sense of humor. I’m glad they cast an off-color, fat-positive actor to play the role of Po. He brought that necessary authenticity to it.

It’s probably going to be sacrilege, but I think these films play in the same field as the best Pixar films. They may not have that “classic” polish, but like Po, their skill isn’t in appearing skilled, but having heart.

Dara

A changing of the sails

“Further Adventures in Embodiment” feels the most appropriate name for the good ship Deviewed in its second year. It was my new year’s resolution; it’s my newest tag; and it seems to be one of the fundamental thrusts of the blog in general, to wrestle a sense of agency flung very far, into family, into lovers, and finally into the world of those undulating screens that the 21st century is so lousy with. Creating my own physical narrative is more my goal now.

Don’t get me wrong, I still engage in – and enjoy – a lot of the same roleplaying, television, gaming and music that I did last year and all the years before. But I think as I present myself to you, and in effect present a new me to myself, it will become more urgent for me to truly look into the right mirror, a blank mirror, rather than hold up that which I can only somewhat see myself in. After all, if you search for your identity outside of yourself, your identity will be controlled by the rules of whatever it is. Which isn’t always the worst thing, but I’m sort of slowly falling in love with my own organic spontaneity and instincts and sense of what’s best for myself.

Dara