I have a mostly cordial relationship with my body. I wouldn’t call us best friends, but we’re like roommates who have grown to accept the others’ presence, even if there are times when one might want to “accidentally” toss the others’ prized cashmere sweater in the dryer.
Often roommates, especially married or familial ones, develop a symbiotic relationship. It seems improbable to compare the relationship that one’s personality has with one’s body as symbiotic, when theoretically they are the same person, I know. Still, so many mornings I have awoken, dragged myself to the bathroom before showering, stripped, stood in front of the mirror agog by the entirely unknown creature in front of me.
As I have written before, my weight has always played a strong factor in the degree of rejection my cerebral person felt for my corporeal one. What I wonder now is when has my corporeal self most loathed my cerebral self?
Given my health history, I have to postulate that there may be something to this notion that somewhere at the cellular level, my body is trying to oust me. Possibly it is a microbiomial coup.
This would go a long way toward explaining the digestive ailments, the skin problems, the yeast infections, the immune issues, and how many other ailments that modern medicine has tried to fix by removal of body parts or addition of another chemical remedy.
I wonder if at the heart of all of the relationships I need to resolve and repair, if this isn’t the most important.