Guided Excision and Cleaning of the Heart Muscle

Chapter One

When people describe the smell of fear or panic they often use the word “metallic”.  A beautiful word, but fear seems more pungent to me, more gamey. The smell of your armpits after wrestling a massive bout of pain and rage… it’s fear all right. Fight or flight even. Garter snake musk. It smells so guilty and musky and failed. So resigned and sad. Some glands surely must have burst after that storm, no? 

It’s not unheard of to piss yourself in a car accident. All the sacs and membranes that hold stuff you need to flush out release explosively, except your bladder and bowels. (Well, mostly, but this is an opportunity to get to know your rarer smells.) Your cells panic and puke out all the spent uranium rods and compost at once and shove it right out of your pores instead of sending it to your kidneys first in a civilized fashion. It’s a fucking stampede. (I still love you, mitochondria!) It was an emergency, or so your brain and body think. And so it was. Even your hair stinks! It’s like a sea urchin just wiped its ass in both your armpits. (I’m not a doctor, by the way.) This is very normal if you have some pain inside you, even if these smelly freak-outs happen at the wrong time. Some asshole once said we have “nothing to fear but fear itself”. Myself, I fear depression. As a woman, I also fear “The C Word” – “crazy” (not “cunt”, I relish that blunt and holy word). I’m not afraid or ashamed of being divergent or impaired in any way, but for others (white cisgender men) to decide such a thing for me… it’s primal and deep with the darkest and cruelest of reasons. (A good book for learning why I just said that.)

Lately my bizarre armpit smells have been crowding out the normal benign-ish ones as I’ve been sweating out the strychnine leavings of inappropriate adrenaline a LOT. The hangover and come-down from trauma hypervigalence is crushing and I’m in need of some relief SO I just started intense trauma and PTSD therapy. It’s a looooong time coming. Several lifetimes of my super fucked up family-long. I promise not to bore you with the personal events. They are unremarkable things that so many human beings and other creatures experience. I guess that’s why I feel like writing about just going to intense trauma therapy here may be good? One of my most clenched yearnings is to be useful, and in turn utilized for that usefulness. I want to help out, or at least just labor for something. Maybe a tiny splinter of recognition in one of these posts may help somebody. Here’s to hoping. Don’t worry, I’m not working to trigger anyone, or trying to white-lady anyone (a process) so please speak up if I do and you need to call bullshit on it. Did I mention I’m not a doctor?  I just want to share the things that seem to come along whilst trying to keep my life going. The two radically un-harmonious forces harnessed together side by side, like a forest fire and a bull with its nuts in a blunt Burdizzo “Bloodless Castrator”. (Thank you, Jon Rauhouse :)  First off, I’m TERRIBLE at keeping things separate in my life, so I hope some of this is maybe kinda funny? And second, mental and emotional health are your greatest NATURAL assets too, so let’s love ourselves in a no-holds-barred kinda way.

My first and second telehealth sessions with my really kind doctor were intake questions and slap-dash recountings of my most humiliating, shameful and sad memories. I sounded like a third grader describing “Jaws” to another third grader whose parents wouldn’t let them watch something so scary. I rush through the plot like I'm totally over it and invented horror movies, but then I start bawling when I quote the line, “She’s got doll’s eyes, Chief!” Now and then I noticed how handsome my glasses are and feel a little like a fraud? AT LEAST I’M CRYING!

So, here in the beginning, before even getting to the “exposure” part of the treatment I cry like that blood-poisoned little hang-nail, Brett Kavanaugh, every other day. It’s surprising, but not so bad. I am not Brett Kavanaugh after all, but I do have a sea monster living in my heart. He’s a lovely sweetheart, but he’s far too big for my ribcage and has too many teeth for his mouth. He has smashed a few coffee cups in his day, poor kid. I’m hoping all my tears are just watering the slip ‘n’ slide to make his exit smooth, maybe even fun? That may be too much to hope for, but why not?! Aim high! (Maybe if he just got out of the house a little more?)

What’s living in your bodies rent free? Draculas? Oil spills? Scissor fish? If you feel like describing them, I’d love to hear. MWAH! Rage on, freedom fighters! xo

Below: My science team Harlan and Clover Barker-Rigby have used cat model, Rooster Woodgrain to illustrate via exploded diagram how several monsters can take up space in your body without you inviting them. Photo by Paul Rigby