Bodies

I recently began investing myself again in some of my old schoolbooks, thinking that studying would help me feel better about not being in school, more grounded, maybe, more connected to the subjects that I had been passionate about even in the midst of my illness. At the moment I've been reading Simone de Beauvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity, a philosophical work that kicks off its first chapter solidly in the red in the cheer-o-meter by discussing death.

It's hard to study philosophy while depressed and suicidal. Sooner or later my lessons dwelled on questions like, is human life pointless? Does free will actually exist? Can we say for sure that we exist? It's like a bingo card for all the things you're trying hard not to think about because it'll suck you into that dark whirlwind inside your head again. I don't blame philosophy for this: I was the one who signed up for class after class, thinking that I'd magically get better by the time the next hard discussion rolled around and could contribute something besides unhappy silence. It's hard not to roll my eyes at Past Me, who was so deeply caught in her depression that she didn't notice how bad things actually were. It's like being on fire and thinking, "Ah, I appear to be on fire. Hmm."

One line very early in de Beauvoir's first chapter caught my attention. She writes that people "... have established a hierarchy between body and soul which permits of considering as negligible the part of the self which cannot be saved."

This line struck me. I spend a lot of time frustrated with my body: frustrated that my brain needs medication to function at its best, frustrated with my tiredness, my sleeplessness, my fevers, frustrated, basically, with all of my failings. I have felt self-conscious that my teeth are not completely white, that my bony little body doesn't have a real woman's curves, that my hair often goes unwashed when I cannot push myself to have to focus and the energy to take care of myself. I imagine that we all have a list of such frustrations; mental illness and physical illness can cause that list to skyrocket.

It has been very difficult to appreciate my body in the middle of all of these frustrations. But my body, all bodies, are hardly negligible: they are miracles of biology, which elements and molecules and cells arranging themselves in a billion little ways to build the human machine. And that may seem basic and self-evident, and it doesn't cancel out the many struggles I have with my body, but it does go a long way towards me making peace with myself and my situation.

I'm not there yet, but I'm getting there.

#mentalhealth #mentalillness #philosophy #SimonedeBeauvoir #physicalillness #physicalhealth