Mind the body
Is there nowhere out of the mind, I asked last January, nodding to Sylvia Plath,
and vowing to put physicality back into my life.
So many of my joys were abstractions.
Politics, philosophy, poetry are labors of the mind, not the body.
Surely, there's more to being human than cogito ergo sum?
Being diagnosed with a chronic disorder is an effective way to transition from mind to body.
As the body starts attacking itself, abstractions offer little help and poetry becomes a poor distraction.
It used to shield me from outside enemies, but my immune system has gone rogue- it rebels.
Moving into a disease is like diving through grief.
At times it is difficult to remember that this does not define me,
difficult to see that just because my body is fragile- I don't have to be.
But navigating between nodes of denial, melancholy and renegotiation,
I find myself seeing so clearly what we already know: the mind-body problem is a false dichotomy.
There's nothing I am thinking that does not originate in my anatomy.
There's no way out of the mind unless you leave your body behind, too.
A humbling thought on my way to acceptance.
So, here I am
more human than ever
frail and herculean,
Embodied.
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