Eat Your Meat
I haven’t called my mom in two weeks and I believe she thinks I am not well. This is, however, irrelevant considering my means to operate and how detailedly I explained myself to her two years ago when she thought I fell off the face of the earth (which happened again, here, right now). The realisation that writing wasn’t really a way out didn’t strike me last week, or last April for that matter. I have the tendency to believe that a coping mechanism needs to be violently abundant in brutality, savagery even.
My only problem with this issue is that I have never been linear, I have never wanted something and stuck with it, I have never believed in something with such loyalty that it put me in the grave, executing me with only the sharp echo of its callous presence. Frankly, the only constant of my consciousness was my ‘ability’ to not be constant. It felt like the persistent reminder that there is a malicious intent, a homicidal tendency directed towards a pietist – like Saint John scratching the inside of a bathtub with dirty fingernails instead of kissing the top of my head with myr scented lips – which would make me go mad. But he can do whatever the hell he wants to – God given right until proven wrong, or something. And I will be mean to him. Does the saint I was named after have any responsibility for me? Or, am I a physical projection of its only sacred desire to not be forgotten? Are we here to commemorate?
The truth is, I could’ve never satisfied my need for disturbance in ordinary theological practice. In order to feel that leap of faith, I needed to induce myself into a religious psychosis, one which would make delusions crawl on me like a thousand bed bugs. And when lent came around this year I wrote on a sticky note glued to my bedside table (which is actually a wooden two step stair I use to throw my cigarette buds on): “I hope I get so sick I won’t get out of bed.” I threw it away a couple of days later and mourned the state of lent which I knew would crumble under another eaten animal, sexual intercouse, or any contemporary hedonistic bullshit. When I first saw my psychiatrist, she explained I have a chronic feeling of emptiness but most importantly a chronic need to fill it. And I tried to fill it so damn much that it ended up stretching outside of my digestive system. It got emptied every night by garbage men, or fairies, or a claw perpetually ripping its way in and out, and when I finally woke up, I couldn’t see my left arm hanging from my shoulder. I was a rabbit hole whose end (concerningly so) resided in genesis. That was my border. But it didn’t feel violent, or brutal. It was plain, boring, not even a bit tragic. Not even close to a young bible seller with a hand me down suit stealing the wooden leg of a blushing young girl. No good country people here.
I don’t know if the presence of Eden made me feel seen or invisible. I have no interest in Adam, or Eve, or how they filled up their tummies with God’s brain. But do you think there is another eater at the border? Do you think they know being empty is more of a spiritual revelation rather than a physical state? I want to lay in bed and abstain. This is what I do when I have to seek: I hide between my own ribs.
And abstaining from food, although a humanly practice done with a bit of rationality, fell in line with a certain savagery which always seemed more spiritual than prayer. Objectively speaking, if my stomach was empty, my digestive system sedated, I wouldn't feel lonely, or angry. I would feel this hole expanding so greatly that there was very little flesh left, only a small surface to feel the sting on anymore. It was almost painless, comfortingly disturbing. Because passing out was easier, almost rewarding. And if my body is merely a physical projection of my spirit and I starve it well enough, it might toss and turn until all dust is shed off.
And it was no medicine of my own. When my mother sporadically tried to find a cure for my sadness between the ages of 14 and 22, she took me to the monastery. She believed the priest there was of prophetic nature, a hermit with all and, at the same time, no ties with the outside world. Almost every year I passed by, he couldn’t remember who I was but always proceeded to know I suffered from melancholy, and that ‘all doors close under such a despairing stare.’ The medical prescription, as he called it, was simple: two prayers to two different saints every day of the week, except on Sundays when I should’ve been calling on Virgin Mary, holy water every morning on an empty stomach (except when I was on my period), and cross signing my pillow every night before bed to cast bad spirit away. ‘Not strong enough, not strong enough’ I traced the letters on the inside of my wrist while he was talking incoherently every time as if God was somehow speaking through him. The other often-unspoken pill was more of mechanical nature: no food — walk through the world hungry – for fuel and whatever else you’ve ever wished for since you were eight. And when you’ve finally done it long enough, anything you could ingest before seems rotten. It’s a life sentence.
Anyway, you should know this isn’t really about God. I occasionally made myself vomit to remember their fingers deep in my mouth. I chewed on my knees to feel the taste of anything. I skinned small portions of my legs to stop feeling the weight of them on top of me. And this was more effective than any kick of serotonin my psychiatrist ever prescribed.
