what the dark side of the moon and my bra have in common
(TW: Death, body politics, adolescence, harassment, threat, implied rape)
there's this world-wide silence, as a girl. not just the seen silences. but the more slight yet relentlessly violent silence we are conditioned to inflict, in order to protect ourselves from further violence. the survival instinct to self-abandon. counter-intuitive right? a frozen river trying to flow. women are the whole moon. and we see the dark side of it, every, month. death, cycles, rebirth. its all in us. from young. but we are also deaf, blind and severed from our gut, on the dark side of the moon. what even is navigation? Half of the entire moon is unspoken-of, uncharted territory; terrifying, incomprehensible and viscerally destroying.
woke up this morning, immediately faced self-inflicted solitary confinement, my bra. fuck. i'm in pain that reduces me entirely to my bed. on the days im lucky enough to not have work anyway. my muscles feel like they're slowly being torn apart, tissue-for-tissues, like stubborn Velcro stuck to your favourite woolly jumper. bones feel like they're disintegrating away from their proximal structures and no... no im not 'just going to take pain killers', not yet. as much as it sucks like an infinitely void black hole. as much as I am blind. because the visceral experience originates from me. and young minds ask why? and I don't know much, but I do know I exist before I can comprehend myself. and that is all I know to be true. soooo… i'm curious. I am more interested in the experience than the numbing. although sometimes I need the numbing. sometimes, the numbing, is the medicine. anyway. point is. we die. a lot. like a starfish's leg. my body shows me metaphor is very real. I shed therefore... I shed. The moon is fully illuminated tonight and so are my shadows. 'easily triggered'. well yeah. more light in shining onto the darkness. the veil is thinner between your subconscious, your wounds, the rucksack of rocks you've been carrying because otherwise your nipples will make people uncomfortable in the supermarket. or, threaten your safety. ****. so back to the bra. there is no reason this strap of material that is going to press on my diaphragm all day and make the nausea more consuming and overstimulate me and just generally piss me off, is needed. but I look at myself in the mirror. light white top. perfect for the conditions. nothing pressing into my vital organs. when suddenly... two anatomical phenomena are staring right back at me. they say "we want shotgun on the day's ride". and I have to look at them, like my dog when I leave the house. and say, perhaps it isn't best to come outside, because...well... i dont know why. how do you go on to tell yourself that you now have to barter with an invisible entity, and feel your own autonomy be infiltrated, alone, in your own childhood bedroom. and by what? what is happening here? this is a very loud experience for a young girl. is it loud externally? no. should it be? probably. is a bit strange and literally nothing to do with ourselves. why isn't it then? uhh because it is generally quite quickly demoted to the least of our concerns when it comes to survival and what we only later understand to be termed later as; 'body politics'. you observe, quickly, there is a weird myriad societal strangeness around you. odd, strangeness. strangeness that is entirely non-existent to the childhood bedroom. here. here most of my dolls didn't even have clothes. still, they would go on huge adventures, ride zip-lines I'd construct across the apparatus of my bedroom, have their bold say in their relationships and usually, absolutely love picking out their clothes, when they wanted to. and just like them, I started to grow up and feel so excited about all the things I would be able to do with my own little avatar.
A little older, I started walking place-to-place. Soaking in the sun, long-blonde hair dancing with the breeze, favourite yellow shorts on, long-legs running free. BEEEEEEEEEEP. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. oh gosh, what's happened? The skip in my step slows and I take out an earphone to search for the origination of the noise. OIIIIIIIIII! there's a man, in a van. and another man, next to him. they're grown ups. they're shouting at me. I can't think what for? they eventually pass and i keep walking. slightly, more aware this time. slightly, more dulled though, by the unnerving strangeness of the encounter. my music skips to a song i love and i find my rhythm again. when i'm in this rhythm i feel like im walking on air, like i could lend a hand to everyone in the town, like i have the answer to every worldly issue we have. and for the record, the answer usually revolves loving our neighbours. and, getting out more. moving. laughing, in a perfect world. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! Again? what's going on? I go through the same motions as earlier, though slightly more alarmed, so the earbud tugs forcefully away from my head. there, again. is anyone seeing this? another dirty, seemingly falling-apart van. with a man. and another man. one shouts and the other usually has a huge grin on his face. that's the recipe. that's the one that continues anyway.
I'm 16, just. so i still spend most of my time in school. not really recognisable for any specific reason. but it didn't stop. not for years. in fact, especially when i was in my school uniform. i never really understood why. i mean i was forced to reckon with some strange sort of distortional concept thing, i guess. but, never made sense. still doesn't. shouldn't. wont. cant. then, you're nearly of age. and it gets worse. you still don't know why, really. except now you're inebriated. ahh. because it's normalised and you grew up trusting the adults right. assuming the most fundamental parts of your culture are well-intended and righteously embedded. and also internally you're feeling these, like, deaths, more and more. but you don't know what that feeling is. so some numbing actually helps. it helps you stay alive, through all the death. like a medicine, i guess. the death happening inside. the death happening outside. the death of your skipping. the death of your stride. the death of engaging with reality freely and whole-heartedly. the death of an internal wellspring of health and flowing emotions. the death of not noticing that your body could be seen as a confinement. the death of not existing only cerebrally. the death of your childlike freedom. the death of your purity. but not the death of your naivety. no. not that. naturally, you are so full of love, faith and compassion that it would take internal crushing beyond comprehension to kill. and yet, slowly, that too creeps...creeps. you have no capacity for how it's all affecting you. you are just in pain, alone, on the dark side of the moon. in the darkness of your room. unknowingly, populated by every. other. girl. going through the same thing, in her childhood bedroom, with her bra. confused. you look around and nobody seems to see? just like the vans. so your mouth seems to stay glued. so, nobody is talking. nobody knows that there is anyone else around them. and we end up doing it to ourselves. why? because we're wired to survive. because you can't just stay off work for a period, you cant just rest in a hyper productive culture, you cant least wear a top, without a bra, on that sunny day, that you love...because... of...the strangeness. i won't waste the force of my fingertips attempting to articulate the strangeness. plus it is not mine to know nor contain. i am still the body in the mirror of my childhood bedroom. i still love my light, white top. but to walk around in it, as i so wish...hah, i would be forced to sign an invisible contract with side effects of: harassment, loud, group-shaming and potential violation, of all levels. ultimately registered as threats to survival. a no-go. premise registered: the things that make me feel free are registered as threats to survival. right. okay. the philosophy lessons for the young girl begin. not to mention, very bright, very curious, very self-reflective young girl. why does my top have a contract? what on earth is all this about? and who on earth enables it? and why is it translating into my life as uncontrollable self-destruction? what does this all tell me? do i want to even ask that? but not asking is to numb. welcome to your first ego death / dark night of the soul. except not even your culture understands those concepts, let alone you, in your childhood room. so the attachment begins. and so does the ruthless suffering.
enter; the cycle. the externalising of the original wonder of the world. but somehow. women, now disconnected mentally, spiritually and physically from flowing with what, can be understood as a shedding. a letting go, at least. a doing away with old layers, identities, patterns, fears, truths. instead, fed paracetamol, societal shame and metaphysical pain. by that i mean pain at all levels. The physicality is just the symbol. it is an intelligent physical communication of the unseen. the psychological, emotional, spiritual shedding. death. and equally. the rebirth. the cycle. now, when any young person, teenager, is not taught about how to shed. how to surrender. how to die, internally. how to let an identity collapse around you. when you are told everything real is physical. you cannot consolidate the suffering you feel as a human, entering the death of your childhood. in the dark. no guidance. no cycle. no hope of rebirth. and yet the cycle is all around us. it controls us. it scares us. it leaves us with only awe. and only now.
i am stunned by the thresholds of society young girls confront alone, in childhood bedrooms, without even trying to. without even wanting to. enter here the commonly used meme of 'as a girl i learned this when i was 12'. yes, girls experience what is pretentiously gatekept and regarded as high-degree philosophical phenomena, inside their own bodies, rather immediately. and you wanna know my guess why. it is because the power and mystery of life itself originated within the reproductive capacities of the female species. and those two anatomical phenomena, fleshy-eyes of the universe, staring right out at you. those are the original wonders of the world. the pre-requisite questions. Sartre wouldn't even exist without 'em! lol.
note: thankfully, due to the highly-evolved and remarked intelligence of Homo sapiens, it can be recognised that it is not my word to denote the strangeness as belonging to any pre-determined set of biological parameters. obviously that would be insanely illogical. and i don't personally lean toward doctrine but more patterns in nature. like I say the only thing i knew to be true ultimately as a young girl was that i existed before comprehension of myself. so, that's just kinda all i can go off. but to acknowledge the force of the strangeness as it's own strange, nuanced thing. and to simply tell the story of my own experience of it. so i am speaking, shouting even, from the dark side of the moon. find me here.
let it be known. when we are aware, are not resisting the flow of the cycle. we are better off. but this raises a notion, unthinkable to science (even though we see it everywhere), the universe's uno switch card, if you will. death is never the end. death is the final threshold, that when surrendered to it, is transformed, into new life. and death can be experienced at many levels.
i think, what if we even let the idea of death, die?
rh.