Tonight's Poet Corner: My Shirt
My Shirt
by Belinda Roddie
Once upon a time, I was a hypochondriac; it's
worth noting that I still am, technically, a
hypochondriac, because as experts like to tell us,
once a crazy person, always a crazy person.
But for the sake of conventional storytelling,
let's stick with the liberating past tense: was.
From 2011 to 2012, I was obsessed with sickness.
It began with a tick bite that wouldn't go away,
and even though my immune system was like a steel
factory, melting away mischief with T-cell cogs
and teeth, I went to the doctor to get useless
antibiotics. That was when, coincidentally,
the headaches started. I was prescribed
way too strong a nasal spray. Then I couldn't
sleep. And from there on out,
anything that proved remotely
precarious to my health and happiness
was always on my mind. I could get a
bruise on my leg from a simple slip
and fall on the asphalt
right outside the interfaith building
where I attended noon Catholic mass, and then
believe, after ill-conceived study sessions
with the demonic Internet, fear that I would
develop necrotizing fasciitis and watch my flesh
blister and decay, black plague on skin.
When the tsunami hit Japan, I shuddered
for the lives of the victims, but then I couldn't help
squirming at the possibility that radioactive fish
could wind up on my plate and cast its pall of
the dreaded C word across my liver and thyroid.
Not like I didn't have enough genetic susceptibility
in other parts of my body already. And even when
the false prophets spoke of the end of the world,
massive earthquakes on my graduation day, and I
laughed alongside my friends and made jokes at the
expense of overly gullible believers - in the middle
of the night, I would bury my dreams in my pillows,
terrified that somehow, the prophets were right.
It was the year that I was supposed to, finally,
love myself, but being honest about yourself
doesn't always bring out self-compassion. Facing
the concept that I was gay
and had been gay for as long as
I knew what the word "love" meant was a release at first,
but it later haunted me because I asked myself why
I couldn't have been honest before. I had friends who
adored me, and yet inside my own head,
I never felt more alone. And when I made new friends,
I panicked, wondering when the day would come
when I colored the image they had of me toxic,
and they turned their backs on me for being too
emotional, too analytical, too defensive, too
talkative, too aggressive, too loud,
too raucous, too anxious. It didn't help
that I had always been a bit of a
problem child. I endured a bad habit of
punching things when I got mad. I could never
back away from a confrontation, especially
when I was lonely and friendless and I felt like
I had absolutely nothing to lose. To this day,
I can be selfish. I can be mean. I can string
nasty words together to create nasty phrases
that mutate into nasty paragraphs, and I knot up
people's intestines when I say them. And I know
deep down, I don't mean any of it, and I can't
stand myself for saying those things, but the knot in my
own stomach is already too large and as hard as stone,
and I waste enough brain space wondering if the
honeybee population will die off and cause worldwide
famine, or the sun will fry our gadgets to the point
in which nothing electronic will work, or a
supernova will belch enough gamma rays to render
the entire human race extinct. And the irrational
stress evolves until it is resistant to
typical remedies and therapeutic methods, and I
explode outward, only to fold inward and see
every snapped wire, burnt out bulb, and broken bolt
of machinery that holds my feeble feelings together,
and I cannot love myself.
Maya Angelou, bless her heart, once said,
"I do not trust people who don't love themselves
and yet tell me, 'I love you.' [...] Be careful
when a naked person offers you a shirt." When I
read that quotation, I felt something unprecedented,
a bubble of anger swelling in the carbonated cortex
of my analytically acidic mind, because you see,
Ms. Angelou, God protect you, I have found a woman,
and she has told me she loves me, yet
her ache to love herself is as large
and as salty as the Pacific, and in the currents,
our seas of longing converge. When I look at her,
mo chuisle, my heart, my pulse, my life, I can see
no error, no glitch, no fragmented scratch on the
stained glass of her soul. She is beyond scientific
equations and medical results - she is everything
I want to love about myself, and the fact that I
can love her despite her flaws is telling
when I can hardly praise myself despite my own.
To tell me, however, that I am naked,
trying to offer her a tunic, is so ridiculously
careless - almost dangerous. And that's not
easy for me to say, Ms. Angelou, because
your words are from your heart,
and you wish for me to love myself
so I can know how to love someone else,
but it is actually meant to be the
opposite - through loving her,
I can discover what is so lovely about me.
It is not that I am naked, offering clothing
I do not have. I have a shirt, and
it has not fit my frame for some time now,
and I have yet to grow accustomed
to the feel of it, and while it's my only shirt,
I can't bring myself to wear it. But when I drape it
over my love's head, pulling the fabric down,
tucking her slender arms through the sleeves, I see her
silhouette filling in the cloth beautifully, and I,
bare-chested, let her keep the shirt off my own back
because it provides her warmth even when I am
in the cold. Do not tell me you cannot trust me to
love you because I don't happen to have the privilege
of loving myself! It is only through her -
her, who has promised me that she will love me
enough for the both of us, and I will love her enough
for the both of us - that I can find peace within myself.
That I can forgive myself for becoming too obsessed with
rare diseases. That I can swallow self-vitriol
after rambling about a strain of spiritual consciousness
for too long. That I can snap the already skipping
vinyl in half so the needle stuck in the groove
doesn't keep growling, You suck, you suck, you suck,
over and over and over again
when I bare my teeth a little too rabidly,
or spit a little too loudly. Because the
moment I am scorned for not loving myself
is the moment I risk losing all gained knowledge
on my journey to learn how.
Come,
I'll give you my shirt. You can give me
yours in exchange if it doesn't fit you
right, and I'll wear it and it'll feel like
heaven, and when we're both ready, we can trade,
but we may never need to.
by Belinda Roddie
Once upon a time, I was a hypochondriac; it's
worth noting that I still am, technically, a
hypochondriac, because as experts like to tell us,
once a crazy person, always a crazy person.
But for the sake of conventional storytelling,
let's stick with the liberating past tense: was.
From 2011 to 2012, I was obsessed with sickness.
It began with a tick bite that wouldn't go away,
and even though my immune system was like a steel
factory, melting away mischief with T-cell cogs
and teeth, I went to the doctor to get useless
antibiotics. That was when, coincidentally,
the headaches started. I was prescribed
way too strong a nasal spray. Then I couldn't
sleep. And from there on out,
anything that proved remotely
precarious to my health and happiness
was always on my mind. I could get a
bruise on my leg from a simple slip
and fall on the asphalt
right outside the interfaith building
where I attended noon Catholic mass, and then
believe, after ill-conceived study sessions
with the demonic Internet, fear that I would
develop necrotizing fasciitis and watch my flesh
blister and decay, black plague on skin.
When the tsunami hit Japan, I shuddered
for the lives of the victims, but then I couldn't help
squirming at the possibility that radioactive fish
could wind up on my plate and cast its pall of
the dreaded C word across my liver and thyroid.
Not like I didn't have enough genetic susceptibility
in other parts of my body already. And even when
the false prophets spoke of the end of the world,
massive earthquakes on my graduation day, and I
laughed alongside my friends and made jokes at the
expense of overly gullible believers - in the middle
of the night, I would bury my dreams in my pillows,
terrified that somehow, the prophets were right.
It was the year that I was supposed to, finally,
love myself, but being honest about yourself
doesn't always bring out self-compassion. Facing
the concept that I was gay
and had been gay for as long as
I knew what the word "love" meant was a release at first,
but it later haunted me because I asked myself why
I couldn't have been honest before. I had friends who
adored me, and yet inside my own head,
I never felt more alone. And when I made new friends,
I panicked, wondering when the day would come
when I colored the image they had of me toxic,
and they turned their backs on me for being too
emotional, too analytical, too defensive, too
talkative, too aggressive, too loud,
too raucous, too anxious. It didn't help
that I had always been a bit of a
problem child. I endured a bad habit of
punching things when I got mad. I could never
back away from a confrontation, especially
when I was lonely and friendless and I felt like
I had absolutely nothing to lose. To this day,
I can be selfish. I can be mean. I can string
nasty words together to create nasty phrases
that mutate into nasty paragraphs, and I knot up
people's intestines when I say them. And I know
deep down, I don't mean any of it, and I can't
stand myself for saying those things, but the knot in my
own stomach is already too large and as hard as stone,
and I waste enough brain space wondering if the
honeybee population will die off and cause worldwide
famine, or the sun will fry our gadgets to the point
in which nothing electronic will work, or a
supernova will belch enough gamma rays to render
the entire human race extinct. And the irrational
stress evolves until it is resistant to
typical remedies and therapeutic methods, and I
explode outward, only to fold inward and see
every snapped wire, burnt out bulb, and broken bolt
of machinery that holds my feeble feelings together,
and I cannot love myself.
Maya Angelou, bless her heart, once said,
"I do not trust people who don't love themselves
and yet tell me, 'I love you.' [...] Be careful
when a naked person offers you a shirt." When I
read that quotation, I felt something unprecedented,
a bubble of anger swelling in the carbonated cortex
of my analytically acidic mind, because you see,
Ms. Angelou, God protect you, I have found a woman,
and she has told me she loves me, yet
her ache to love herself is as large
and as salty as the Pacific, and in the currents,
our seas of longing converge. When I look at her,
mo chuisle, my heart, my pulse, my life, I can see
no error, no glitch, no fragmented scratch on the
stained glass of her soul. She is beyond scientific
equations and medical results - she is everything
I want to love about myself, and the fact that I
can love her despite her flaws is telling
when I can hardly praise myself despite my own.
To tell me, however, that I am naked,
trying to offer her a tunic, is so ridiculously
careless - almost dangerous. And that's not
easy for me to say, Ms. Angelou, because
your words are from your heart,
and you wish for me to love myself
so I can know how to love someone else,
but it is actually meant to be the
opposite - through loving her,
I can discover what is so lovely about me.
It is not that I am naked, offering clothing
I do not have. I have a shirt, and
it has not fit my frame for some time now,
and I have yet to grow accustomed
to the feel of it, and while it's my only shirt,
I can't bring myself to wear it. But when I drape it
over my love's head, pulling the fabric down,
tucking her slender arms through the sleeves, I see her
silhouette filling in the cloth beautifully, and I,
bare-chested, let her keep the shirt off my own back
because it provides her warmth even when I am
in the cold. Do not tell me you cannot trust me to
love you because I don't happen to have the privilege
of loving myself! It is only through her -
her, who has promised me that she will love me
enough for the both of us, and I will love her enough
for the both of us - that I can find peace within myself.
That I can forgive myself for becoming too obsessed with
rare diseases. That I can swallow self-vitriol
after rambling about a strain of spiritual consciousness
for too long. That I can snap the already skipping
vinyl in half so the needle stuck in the groove
doesn't keep growling, You suck, you suck, you suck,
over and over and over again
when I bare my teeth a little too rabidly,
or spit a little too loudly. Because the
moment I am scorned for not loving myself
is the moment I risk losing all gained knowledge
on my journey to learn how.
Come,
I'll give you my shirt. You can give me
yours in exchange if it doesn't fit you
right, and I'll wear it and it'll feel like
heaven, and when we're both ready, we can trade,
but we may never need to.
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