The tyranny of physicality

[rackmount]

When days are hard, when Linus is difficult or I feel overwhelmed by the drudgery of it all, I find the greatest comfort in consideration of death. Not just death, but execution, by hand-gun usually, but sometimes by blade or somesuch. There's something so soothing about the idea of the blood seeping out as consciousness leaves

Comments

[popkultur]

Reading this makes me feel a little less alone in the world. Thanks for sharing stuff like this - it means a lot to me.

I won't go into the details of my chart here, but this post rang my consciousness like a bell.

[rackmount]

Having people like you reading and understanding means a lot to me. It's amazing isn't it? This is one of the only places I feel like I can actually say what I feel. Even (and perhaps especially) with my husband, I feel like any divergence from a particular narrative creates a big ... Thing. Or something.

It holds me together, to have this and you.

[anonymous]

Tobias Wolff wrote a story called "Bullet in the Brain" where he stretches the split second of a shot to the head into what seems like hours as the victim thinks all sorts of things, much like we seem to fall into dreams with complete worlds already formed.

[rackmount]

Thanks for the rec, sounds incredible and just what I need to read right now.

[rackmount]

That's what I mean, there's something to stepping away. I used to feel like that all the time, in middle and high school especially. That's what I mean by return. This was a detachment I used to live in, and now I feel like I'm returning to it. I used to walk through the halls feeling like my eyes were television, that everything had that sort of distance of unreality. Probably just a coping mechanism, to make it less hard. I always felt like there was a quiet hard center of me, that existed beyond what all this is.

[anonymous]

I had to skim over the Mad Men bit, since it would be a spoiler to me, but... you're not alone. I am the antithesis of wanting death, but I do feel the tyranny of the body, 3mos postpartum (which, to me, is ENOUGH ALREADY). I feel very physically crotchety, and it's difficult to stay positive that one day my body will again be my own. (I was so fat for so long there [another hormonal imbalance], you'd think I'd be used to it. But I was lucky to bounce back quickly after C. Ah - to be 31 again!) I take comfort by keeping in mind a friend who is 5 years older, who just reclaimed her body. It took her several years, but she's one of those people who can say "I am fitter at 40 than at 30".
I tell myself, "this discomfort is just a phase". It'll be just like eschewing the baby toys, right?
Stay tuned.
-gk