/lit/ - Literature

>>19407570
I just had major surgery on my leg to repair a torn ACL and Meniscus and it’s made me completely rethink my entire concept of what the human body and mind really are. It’s striking to me that I can make a decision with my mind to have my fundamental self hacked open and rearranged by complete strangers and to be perfectly okay with that. A piece of my quadricep now resides in the core of my knee. While I know perfectly well that in 9 months I will be able to hike run and rock climb again, my autonomic nervous system has woken up in a rage and transformed my left quadricep into a swollen, angry bag of pythons, writhing on hot coals. I feel as though my femur has been bludgeoned with a sledgehammer, it’s so convincing of a crime committed. Yet I made the decision to do this, and to do so without opiates, and no matter what I do I cannot align these two components of my spirit, these two selves within me that are at war. My body is not fully my own, it belongs to something much more archaic. This too is a part of me, but one I have no say over. It is the lack of agency over the pain that is harder to handle than my current disability. My limbs are not my own, I merely have access to them.