After a long time of not purposefully cutting, scratching, biting, or bruising myself, I began to take notice of my body. Or rather, my lack of noticing my body. It appeared that only major harm or major injury caught my attention. Little harms never mattered.
During the summer of The Great Migraine, I made a conscious effort to NOTICE my body and respond to its input. It was a dismal exercise but had its moments of pleasure. What is that feeling in my body, I asked? Why do my legs hurt now? What are they telling me?
After the Terrifying Wheelchair Scare II, I learned to notice the hurting in my legs as them remembering some other time during the abuse when they were hurting. Or I learned to notice they were merely tired.
Later, I began to notice strings of other ways I hurt myself by making nearly unconscious decisions. I slowly realized I made decisions based on expediency rather than safety. "The pot's hot. Where's the potholder? Oh, hell, I'll just move it by hand. It's quicker.” This kind of faulty prioritization was what was making me get "accidentally” hurt without any consciousness that I was taking a risk.
I was excited by the new awareness but as usual had to take it slow. It seemed that every time I was able to take a closer look at how I conducted my life there was another plateau to traverse.
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OH, HELL. ANOTHER JOYOUS EXPERIENCE SHOT TO HELL. (What do you mean?) I MEAN WITH ALL THIS SAFETY CRAP THE FEW CHANCES AT BLOODY INJURY WE GET ARE GETTING FURTHER AND FURTHER AWAY. (I' m shocked. I never knew you felt that way.) RIGHT. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL THIS TIME ANOTHER PLANET? WE HAVE TO TAKE OUR PLEASURES WHERE WE CAN. (Speak for yourself.) AS ALWAYS.
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It also explained why I, who had a certain grace, was forever making lapses in judgement which caused me to miscue a move and get hurt. Still, I was shocked by the picture of not including personal risk in my criteria for movement decisions. I suppose to the rest of you this wasn't news. To me, I found the depth to which it ran astonishing.
I started noticing I got hurt a lot simply because I didn't care enough about not getting hurt to figure out a way to do what I wanted and simultaneously assure my safety. Consequently, I could do almost anything and would rush in where angels feared to tread just because I didn't care about getting hurt. Often, I would even briefly have flicker of, “Oh, this bad thing could happen,” but it didn't cause enough of a stir most of the time to even register in my awareness.
This caused me to be competent in many areas. I thought surely there was a way to be competent and safe at the same time. In order to figure out those ways, I had to first pay attention to why I didn't care.