From 9e44bf62521e3df62198f700e687ced3e99cc73d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Madison Scott-Clary Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2020 21:35:14 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] First draft! --- content/gender/surgery/008.html | 75 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++- 1 file changed, 74 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/content/gender/surgery/008.html b/content/gender/surgery/008.html index 00c0b32..06d0a30 100644 --- a/content/gender/surgery/008.html +++ b/content/gender/surgery/008.html @@ -1,6 +1,79 @@ --- date: 2019-11-01 weight: 8 +fit: true --- -the drive home mixed with retrospection +
What can I say of healing? Of life after change?
+I got used to it, bit by bit. I slowly learned my range,
+the extent of my new body. Proprioception caught up immediately,
+and there were no phantom sensations, and the immediacy
+was startling at first, but I got used to it, to my new form.
+Over the next weeks and months, I slowly learned my new norm.
+I learned by regaining feeling. I learned with every muscular flex.
+I learned by dilating. I learned by masturbating. I learned by sex.
+While I refused to let my happiness hinge on such a thing,
+a part of me hoped it'd make me more comfortable get in the swing
+of sex, and while it helped, I still was still largely okay without.
+My body was still my own. Whole and entire. My life played out,
+and I became more myself.
+
This isn't going how you pictured it, this bit of writing.
+You were going to talk more about healing, about fighting
+for permission to change, about your $76,000 bill.
+And here you talk of trees and growth. Did you not get your fill?
+Do you still need this outlet?

+Apparently.
+      Apparently I still need to revel in the newness.
+Apparently, what I need out of this project isn't the trueness
+of the concrete. We should really have expected nothing less.
+This is a project to dig for truth, a project to confess.
+It is not a project for describing stitches stabbing me in the clit.
+It is not for telling about each successive dilator testing the fit
+of my new depths. Could I have gone into that? Yes. Perhaps.
+Perhaps I still will. Later. For now, I still need to run laps,
+to circle around some dark core and discern its edges.
+Perhaps if I know that shape, if I peek over enough hedges,
+I'll somehow know myself better. I don't know. It feels unlikely.
+Maybe there is no knowing the self. Still, I have to try, rightly
+or not.
+
Fair enough. Still, at some point, discuss the concrete.
+So many have asked you to, and perhaps you'd feel complete.
+Perhaps that, too, would be of use to you. Not everything demands
+such thorough introspection. Not everything fits in the wetlands
+of your subconscious

+Of course not. I know this. You know I know this.
+I'm not deflecting, just focusing on this part of the abyss.
+The concrete aspects are for writing with clarity,
+not with verse. They're for writing with the sincerity
+borne of experience, so that perhaps others can benefit.
+Of this, only I need benefit. There is an etiquette
+to writing for others. Here, there is only an ally.
+This is for me and you. Your role is to hear my lie,
+to call it out, to force me to correct myself, my words.
+My role is to keep on writing, be it about surgery or birds,
+and to learn from our discussions. To learn? To suffer?
+Perhaps more the latter. To hurt, and grow tougher
+by hurting.
+
You have been called on that, yes, writing to suffer.
+And it's not wrong. You sit at your laptop and fill the buffer
+with sentences and lines and paragraphs of memories and pain.
+Do you really grow tougher? Is it masochisim, or do you gain
+real insight from this?

+I think I do. It's therapeutic to try and understand myself better.
+is it not? With every paragraph and line and word and letter,
+I think I reduce the borders of that abyss. Or if not reduce,
+I spraypaint a red line five feet from them, so that I can deduce
+my roughest edges. I'm often say that it's easy to discern boundaries
+by crossing them. I've crossed them here, with you. Foundries
+of thought and emotion are within me, ceaselessly toiling.
+I want to tour them all. I want to see them boiling.
+I feel them. I house them. I smell them and taste them.
+I just also want to understand them. There's no chaste hem
+to the subconscious, so I have to map it, map these crude sources.
+Then I can experience thisness --- I hope --- when buffeted by forces
+internal.
+
If you say so, I suppose. Do you think it'll work, though?
+Aren't such works unknowable by definition? They grow,
+they wane. You can sense them by their effects and emissions,
+but isn't seeing them, truly seeing, knowing their positions,
+reserved for dreams?