HA!

Response to Chen Zhen's Body as Landscape

It wasn't until college that I started to feel different, where I realised that I wasn't a perfect shape like everyone else. I had a lot of abnormal edges and at first I tried to hammer those abnormalities back in, so that I might be able to tessellate and fit into the puzzle. But the more I tried, the more I realised I just wouldn't be able to fit. And at first I felt lost, and afraid, really afraid because I realised that I didn't have a place to be. After a few seasons of purgatory, rejection, and losses of identity. i became so frustrated that I dropped everything and began to furiously (but also cautiously) hammer my abnormalities further outwards. But I found myself in a new sort of purgatory, like a person afraid of heights stuck in the middle of a bridge, too afraid to go back, but also too terrified to move forward.

As a result, I began to disregard my own thoughts, not knowing what was mine or what was an external force or whether I could even trust my own instincts. I denied and still struggle with denying my own emotions and feelings of my body. Anxiety/anger/fear/sadness are all words with the same taboo of an expletive during church prayer.

What stuck out to me most in the article is the recurring theme of how the body cannot survive well without the mind and vice versa, because I feel as if my mind and my gut feelings are always at war with each other, and the ongoing battle often just produces a paralysis. "The question of whether the resulting decisions are trustworthy is one [whose] answer will depend on your training [and] how we can train outselves to possess a skill that can be relied on"
This idea of training really intrigues me and is reminscient of Chen Zhen's idea of treatment. A sort of "physical therapy".

Part 1
Maybe I'm the asshole friend who's too weak to take the heat. When a good person and friend should just understand the shortcomings of the other and accept whatever pain or perceived disrespect that comes my way... because they probably didn't mean it... right?

Part 2
Do I really want to be that good friend?

(I realize this is the first Revelation post in the series but, assuming that I've had revelations before in my life, I'd rather not start the  ticker at #1 so instead we're going wtih one of my favorite numbers... 9. Kindly, deal with it, as this is my blog)