What would summer be if I didn’t make it about my physical being? I go through a certain human-kind of hibernation, where I don’t care for my appearance much in the winter but in the summer I have an unstoppable desire to be what others find “hot.” Most likely, the first summer that drew my mind to my body was when I was just twelve. The catalyst was probably a pool memory, like any of the others before but this time just different enough. I remember thinking that I should probably stick to one-piece bathing suits because I wasn’t made for bikinis. Of course, growing up in this time means there’s a different way to experience the self derealization that occurs from involving one’s value solely with the physical self. Instead of becoming dreadfully insecure, I became obsessed with becoming hotter and hotter. My confidence has been undeniable since my childhood, but which parts were actually ego disguised in order to make me want more? Or, in this case, less.

At the end of this post I draw all of the signs as anything but human. Stick around.

✯

This process goes hand-in-hand with the romanticization of love. Love, a natural feeling, has now become one in the same with our phones, drugs, and beauty standards. I don’t mean this in an end-of-the-world kind of way, implying that the human race is merely filth in flesh or anything dramatic like that. Marriages were once done out of ownership and we evolved to involve love. Marriages are now done out of love, or so we say, and we must evolve to involve truth. The truth of love is that it can be hard, ugly, cold, sharp, dark, all of the dualities to what we usually view it as. When we deny love as a two-sided object, with each side equally as likely to be landed on, then we deny ourselves the same right. We are also multidimensional, we also have a side of us that is not seen as desirable by the popular majority. In order to make that side more desirable, we do not rid ourselves of it or try to change it into something else, we must simply desire it.

So what is the problem with making every summer about my body? It means that I do not desire myself, which is the only kind of undesirable that actually matters. If I think I must be my best self all of the time, then I will expect the same of love. If I expect the same of love, then I will expect the same of myself and others. This cycle will become just as normal as the water cycle.

The painting I made as this post’s featured image perfectly represents my experience in a woman’s body. I created it during last year’s quarantine, when I spent a lot of time reflecting on my body when it did not have everyone else’s constant attention. I realized that the experience of being a woman is so often represented as a beautiful, mystical thing, that the more prominent feeling of fear camouflages itself.

I’ve been on this planet for twenty-two years which is incredibly short and deliriously long. At this point, I spent half of my life so far as a kid experiencing trauma and the other half as an older kid, still experiencing trauma but now trying to heal the earlier trauma. It’s like I’ve been having the same dream for years. One of those dreams where something is chasing me but there is never a safe destination I arrive to. The only thing left to do, when your legs get tired and you can’t go on, is to turn around and just look at the thing chasing you. I did so recently.

It’s weird looking in a mirror because your body is always in front of you. What a strange perspective to view something we live inside of. As if we could reach out to touch it as we would with another person. The best way to feel your own body is to feel the inside of it. I know this sounds disturbing, but I’m referring to the communication between the brain and the organs, the soul and the self.

When life puts us in time periods where we must hang up on our own body, that’s one less person to talk to when we’re sad. I want to be cheered up by the feeling of my body’s love, noticing the ways it shows up for me each and every day. In spite of the smoking, drinking, fast food, people, and self-hate I’ve put into it, my body shows up anyways. How can I treat myself the way I was once treated before I knew what I deserved? Pardon my French, but that idea is truly a mind-fuck in retrospect.

Embarrassing and bashful, like when we call an old friend to finally apologize for arguments we don’t remember starting, it is hard to reignite the spark with ourselves. Like a relationship with another individual, trust must be rebuilt within ourselves. We must remind our body that we’re working hard to show up for it as well. One way I’ve been doing this is by practicing listening to my body’s signs of discomfort with others. If someone touches me, it’s easy for me to not react and simply flow through my natural flinching. I don’t want to offend them, of course. I don’t want to create any conflict, obviously. Not anymore. I want to intervene on my body’s behalf before it has to experience that stressful experience of flinching from someone’s touch. I want to say, “Please ask before you touch me,” and, “Please stop touching me right now.” Things you would teach a child, but these words live in the far back of my mind.

This Cancer season, remember that we are the only things in between the entire world and our own body.

✯

a world afterwards (a poem)

a store offered me free hand sanitizer today,

sales are signs of viruses going away.

the masks we used are building islands in the sea,

along with other temporary plastic debris.

the elusiveness of the human condition

is becoming a more prominent expedition.

children born into this world owning their mission,

knowing their lives are examples of oppression.

unconsciously consenting to be the future’s lesson

while missing out on their capacity to be present.

what else is there to do as an adolescent?

welcome to a world afterwards,

we’ve been here before but we’re going backwards,

we’re going somewhere hoping the future

is brighter than where we just were.

though the night and day come just the same,

though we watch one another fall for temporary fame,

though the kindness we show is a few shades too tame,

i choose to love the way we aim

for a future we love in a world afterwards.

✯

The Signs’ New Non-Human Bodies ✯ Drawn by Me : )

I wanted to give you guys a new way to perceive yourself, one that has no connection to societal expectations. I will simply draw the signs as I see them. Maybe this summer you can perceive yourself as this non-human self so that you can enjoy your summer without wasting any of your precious time on what you “should” look like.

ARIES ♈︎

TAURUS ♉︎

GEMINI ♊︎

CANCER ♋︎

LEO ♌︎

VIRGO ♍︎

LIBRA ♎︎

SCORPIO ♏︎

SAGITTARIUS ♐︎

CAPRICORN ♑︎

AQUARIUS ♒︎

PISCES ♓︎

✯

Song of the Day

Cancer, like any other sign, has its own sharp edges. To appreciate that idea, please listen to this amazing song and feel free to stomp around and scream while you do. This is just as much Cancer energy as slow songs you cry to!

✯