In a recent Instagram post, I shared an experience I had the night of my second COVID vaccine shot.
This was the post:
It’s a very weird thing to inject oneself with an immunosuppressant drug and then, the very next day, get the second dose of the COVID vaccine.
Last night, unable to sleep due to intense body aches, I imagined a battle inside of me. And instead of freaking out, or lamenting my lifetime of illness, I decided to love on this body of mine. I touched it gently, caressing my arm and saying “You’re doing a great job, you’re working so hard. Thank you. Thank you for taking me this far.” And you know what?
From the depths another voice emerged, echoing those words, saying them right back to me. I didn’t even realize it was happening and then it became so clear: My body was responding. I had passed into a place of self-love that I never knew before. Instead of hating my body for what I perceive as failings, I flipped the narrative and dug a new neural pathway. Riding the fresh powder of the vast brain, I carved a line of gratitude for this skin, these bones, this system that carries me through, day after day.
And it worked.
Freaky, right? Maybe I was imagining things, snared in a fever dream. The thing is, I woke up feeling like I’d shed a stubborn old skin.
When you’ve lived decades disembodied and distrustful of your body, the default position is damn near intractable. I came by my body hatred honestly: a father who emanated self-loathing that tinged our days with an anxiety and anger we couldn’t begin to understand, let alone reject. What we knew was that he was a big man, powerful, his knees shot from playing football. Dad obsessed about food, studied it, planned for it, yearned for it — and though he ate to his heart’s content and then some, he was never truly sated.
(An image of my father
standing at the refrigerator
shaft of light on the tiled floor
rustling of a plastic deli bag
slice after slice of hard salami
washed it down with buttermilk
the shame of hidden
consumption)
Dad had very little patience for the appetites of his children, and he was a yeller. Too often he rode our asses about drinking water, about not eating too much of X, while also throwing out sideline comments about weight and exercise. This came from a man who just kept getting bigger and bigger until both of his knees failed, his discomfort was palpable, and gin became his best friend.
Complimenting his children was anathema to Mr. Howes. His was a method of withholding, because the opposite indicated tacit approval. If he dared tell me that I looked pretty in my new rainbow shirt (after my Mother repeatedly tried to get him to pay attention, look up from the book) then he was accepting me as I was, condoning it even. And he could not do that. I was not good enough, not yet.
Frankly, I was never good enough. None of us were. Unconditional love is not a Howes strong suit.
I was put on my first diet around 10 years of age. To this day, don’t ask me to smell — let alone taste — Mrs. Dash. Stewed tomatoes make me gag. My mother was never one to stock the pantry with processed and/or prepared foods (I appreciate this now, but didn’t then), so I developed an insatiable hunger for such things, particularly Pop Tarts and ice cream sandwiches. We lived near a Speed-E-Foods convenience store, and around the age of 10 (close to when I gave my first blow job), I began swiping dollars from my mother’s wallet (but only if there were more than three bills because she’d never notice one was missing, RIGHT?) so I could gorge on sugar.
When I was 13, I was sexually abused by a 23 year old.
I lost my virginity at 18, in a dingy basement apartment in Toronto, and I used a contraceptive sponge because for some reason I thought it was my responsibility, having been told by every boy I knew, in some roundabout way, that a condom is just a horrifically evil penis suffocating device designed to kill all sensation and pleasure.
My “first time” was not pleasurable. Soon thereafter, that man, my Canadian boyfriend, told me he thought he might be gay. He was on top of me, looking down with such fear and sadness his eyes. More mortified and confused I could not have been.
(Don’t think too much about how I had substantive relationships with two boyfriends who “ended up” gay. There’s no easy explanation. Or maybe I knew, subconsciously, that those men didn’t want me, and it played into my persistent feelings of rejection and despair.)
What I didn’t understand yet was that I’d begun to disassociate when faced with physical intimacy. It wasn’t until I fell in love with a woman and had subsequent relationships with women that I realized my tendency was to perform, to be performative, and to not be present. I didn’t expect much in return, subsuming my own desires, dialing my pleasure switch to the OFF position and taping it there.
In my younger days, I could be a flirt, I’ll admit it. Some may even use the term “player” to describe my initial years in Montana; I arrived believing that I would be the only lesbian within hundreds of miles and was proven wrong, fast. The thing is, it was easier to flit about and “play” the field than it was to be vulnerable, truly intimate. Of course, I wasn’t fully conscious then that beneath it all, I was dealing with bipolar process and drama/sabotage had developed into a bit of a modus operandi. What an exhausting way to live.
Terribly susceptible to adoration and in complete awe of how many women- loving-women walked the streets of Missoula, I found myself in some pickles. I also met my wife, but it took a long time for me to level out enough to pay attention to the Woodson treasure come to the Treasure State.
Underneath it all, I hid secrets. It’s not like I could come right out and tell a girlfriend “hey, I’m not very present in bed, but dammit if I won’t make you feel like a million bucks.”
That disassociation lasted well into my relationship with Sandy, and I didn’t even begin to unpack it until I got deep into talk therapy and started taking medication.
I say all of this to illustrate why what happened to me last week was so extraordinary and body affirming.
_________________
Way back in 1877, philosopher William James wrote of how the behavioral patterns that humans possess — commonly known as habits — define our personhood. This sounds pretty basic until you start considering how habits can be changed, and how hard it is to change them.
All humans have the power to carve new neural pathways, and if we can approach it as an adventure, breaking new trails into the depths of our consciousness (and subconscious), then the power shifts. No longer are we merely products of our own circumstances, or things that were out of our control — as we age and gain life experience, we better understand that we DO have the power to change.
Change is just the beginning. It’s what emerges as those changes take hold that’s the true reward.
And so when I spoke to my body last after that second vaccine and thanked it for working so hard to keep me going, it was the first time I’d ever attempted to skip out of that deep groove of self-admonishment and start carving something far less damaging to my overall health.
I flipped the script, told that uncompromising, never satisfied part of myself to scram, to stop with the incessant judgment.
Acknowledged the miracle that carried me this far.
Called forth the shadow and carved a new pathway.
My body had something to say.
Everything is Always Over 