I've just taken a bath. It's a ritual I am practicing more and more, a kind of cleansing of the self, a time for unhindered introspection, a warm moment. My baptism to the bed.
As I lie in the bathtub looking at the body below me I was struck by how similar it was to all other women, in shape, tone and size, my hipbone disfigurement barely noticeable now, just a lopsided permanent tan and some atrophied muscle. I feel increasingly alienated from my body, as though it's something entirely separate from my mind. It doesn't accurately express the disfigurement within, all that scar tissue and all of that pain. It's normal, it's not mine. It is the archetypal woman, it's not mine. If I expressed outwardly what was inside, I'd look like the elephant man.
I foundLucy Grealy today through a friend- she lost half her jaw from Ewing's Sarcoma as a child and wrote a book entitled Autobiography of a Face. She died of an opiate overdose in 2002.
Out of bath. Into warm bed. I am grateful that my body remains intact. Port comes out tomorrow.
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