This year there was a lot of trying to heal ... and failing. Rather than drip by drip it was blow by blow.
So I hope to overcome this and develop a healthier relationship with my body again.
I wrote this as a guest post a year ago, but it's still the best way to try to look at it. I just need to get there again...
Ever since I can remember I’ve had fragile health.
I get sick often, I get strange diseases
(like whooping cough), I have low blood pressure and used to faint; adding
insult to injury, my teeth would break when I fainted. My period hurts (before,
during and after), I have asthma, chronic rhinitis, I’m allergic to animals,
dust, pollen and most fruits. I have a life threatening allergy to hazelnuts, and just about every bug available in
the developing world.
I’m the youngest of four, so I always
used to joke to my mom that for me she had just used all the left over scrap. I
loved that joke because she always tried to convince me otherwise, which is
hilarious.
Most of my friends consider me a wonder
of nature, and a miracle that I survive my job as an aid worker. I try to
exercise, eat healthy (with the exception of my sweet tooth), vitamins, yoga,
reiki, homeopathy, iridiology - you name it, I’ve tried it.
As a consequence I’ve always looked down on my body. I considered myself
a strong woman trapped in this weakling body which felt like it belonged, or
should belong, to someone else.
Then last summer I was down with
something or other and I took the opportunity to tease my mom about the junk
yard scrap. For once, instead of defending herself from this ridiculous
accusation, she turned to me very seriously and said: “perhaps you were not
supposed to have survived."
Let me put this in context. My mother
started bleeding when she was six months pregnant with me. Not “staining” but
bleeding - soaking towels wet, one after the other. Her doctor informed her she had lost her child and that she needed
to come into the hospital in order to remove whatever remained in her womb.
She said no.
Which in hindsight was hugely
irresponsible. She had three small children (3, 4 and 6 years old). If I’d been
there, I would have dragged her to the ER myself.
But she held on and a few days later the
doctor confirmed that the baby was growing, and therefore still alive. The only
way they could explain what had happened was to assume there had been twins and
only one had survived.
I’ve always known this story.
Because it was never proven it remains
one of those half-myths, but on that summer day, the way my mom presented it to
me completely altered the way that I look at my body now. I used to think it
was weak and faulty, but now I think of it is a survivor. It might not be the
strongest, but hell, it held on, it pulled through. And it has ever since whatever life and chance have thrown its way.
