Kiana

I am scared. This is a time in my life when I’m cementing my interests, refining my passion, and developing particular interests. It feels like being on the edge of a cliff with the subconscious knowledge that you’re about to be pushed; a voluntary burning of the self, the flesh and the mind, in order to emerge rigid, fortified, as a sword is to the flame and the blows of the craftsman’s hammer.

I keep re-reading Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, trying once again to imbibe meaning from words by saying them aloud, rolling them with my tongue; as if to entrench in my heart what little nuggets of light and wisdom I can find; as if to let the book and the words know that I cherish them, as I do my life pals, my intellect, my body.

Maybe not my body.

My body is limiting me from walking the paths I long to take—studying, the practice of discipline, care, kindness, and warmth. I got sick for a week and a half, triggered by a throbbing, dull but constant, pain in my upper back. I am afraid to go through sickness and the worst, because I don’t have a health insurance (who has health insurance in this country?), or any kind of insurance, really. The idea of health insurance sounds strange when you have none, or when you don’t even have an inkling as to how it is processed, how it works. To me, it appeals as this hyper-awareness of an impending sickness, an inchoate presentiment about one’s health or future, which drives everyone, fervently, to apply, or seek, or secure it.

These days I’m always shuffling my feet to keep up with my classes, to heed the calling of my mind to know more and be relentless in conduct. Sometimes my body permits me, and I love it; other times it limits me, cuts me short, robs me of the glory of reaching the goal, the finish line, and so I resent it. I look up at people, after reading a book or writing, and they look like hyperreal, plastic versions of themselves—I’m scared again but I keep quiet, because I know this is my mind in action. This OK-ness with people is strange, knowing that it doesn’t translate to how I see and treat my body, so the goal is this: To be aware, even hyperly so, and transform this knowledge into acceptance. To know and be OK with my corporeality, even more so when it seems to limit me. ♦