![]() ![]() In that way, today will always be significant. ![]() Quite the opposite – cultivating a healthy, necessary detachment was the most 'evolved' choice then available to me. It took a tremendous presence to listen through that stubborn voice, to hear beyond the thinking of my smallest, most proud self, to acknowledge how much worse my curvature was getting and quietly come to understand that – I am not my body – that, not so unlike a vehicle in need of extra attention, I simply traveled in a body that possessed challenges beyond my ability to fix on my own – that, allowing others to help me address those challenges – surgically or otherwise – did not make me 'spiritually inept'. For years, I had been so stubbornly opposed, so willfully certain of its futility, so doggedly determined to 'fix it myself.' And maybe all those doctors were wrong, anyway – maybe I was just supposed to be uniquely shaped. On the contrary – the journey I had to take to arrive at that place of resigned acceptance was decidedly arduous. Which isn't to say that my decision to undergo surgical 'correction' was an act of cowardice or defeat. In truth, the surgery was a sort of disruption – an earnest yet misguided attempt to correct a deeply rooted issue by external means. However obvious the pivot of undergoing such a major procedure, when considered alongside the much harder to define inner parallels, the physical shift seems glaringly simple – devoid of the same depth of meaning inherent in its spiritual counterparts. While it represents the day that my physical body was modified in 'permanent' ways that have affected me greatly, assigning such importance to that fact alone fails to recognize how much work came before and after. In some ways, my acknowledgement of this day's significance has been inaccurate. Though I may not always outwardly express it now, in some, peripheral sense, I'll always think of it that way. A version of my self ceased to be that day – a new iteration took her place. For at least the first decade, I referred to this day as my re-birthday. November 16th – a day of significance – this one marking the 23rd anniversary of my spinal fusion surgery.
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