Melvin & Me, Part 35: How I'm an Accidental Prude

This is going to be one of those cards-on-the-table ones, I think, with some raw stretches that feel maudlin to write but are somehow also true.  Sometimes, I feel I wear my mental health struggles a little too well, which means that I do have to talk about them directly, particularly the places that are hard.  

There are moments at work where we can simply be human, where we can talk about whatever is real to us outside of the fifth floor.  There are spaces to joke and just be people.  One day, someone at the desk asked, "what's that smell?"

Another peer piped up with a glib response:  "Oh, Larissa farted."

I froze inside for just a split second.  There was a spike of panic in my heart, that perhaps my ostomy bag was leaking.  This was quickly dismissed--I knew it was just a silly joke.  Truly something harmless.  And yet.  That panic was real.  There was also a cold emptiness that followed the exit of the panic.  This wasn't a joke I could actually participate in.  Hell, I've had whole existential crises trying to figure out how farting applies to someone with an ostomy.  

I clarified immediately, pulling a face and stating, "Mmm, I don't do body humor."

Naturally, that required some clarification, that I don't participate in body humor because it hits differently with the ostomy and all of the sordid history that I carry.  But my summary was much shorter and the apology was immediate.  I clarified that I'm never mad at someone for not knowing about the ostomy or my preferences in how I discuss it or allude to it, but I would be upset at someone that crossed a boundary that I had deliberately set.  

Lately, there had been two other moments where the group was feeding into a conversation about bodily functions.  "Farts that itch the butthole the one way out," or discussions on along that end of things, a full ten-minute discussion about bodily functions.  This was something that was supposed to be relatable to everyone.  Connecting and humanizing.  

But not me.  With the colostomy, I have no control on what releases when nor do I have an anus anymore--just a memory of what it was once like to have such sensations and worries, exchanged for new ones that most people simply cannot relate to, just a subsect of us.  Know what it's like to have your stomach rumble in a quiet but populated room?  Make the sound wetter and louder...and then normal.  

The longer the conversation went, the more isolated I felt.  I could not connect to the basic experience of, well, sharting or finding a particular place to fart or a number of basic things.  I nodded along, but I had absolutely nothing that I could contribute to that conversation.  It may as well have been in another language.  I felt hollow.  And distant.  Othered.  Quietly hurting behind a mask in a conversation that was intended to build community.  

I thought about it after the fact, wondering if I should have said something to jar the conversation away or bring in my unique take on it, but that wasn't what I wanted.  I'm still not sure what I would want, but I know that I didn't want that, didn't want to just make it about me.  Similarly, I definitely don't want others attempting to point out "well, except Larissa" and then go on a tangent there because pointing out the exclusion can make it worse, particularly when it's by name--a vague mention, maybe, but not a direct one.  In this moment, though, I wanted the rest of the group to have their space, too:  I just didn't know how to be part of it.  

This extends to sex talk.  I don't trust my body.  I have no reason to trust my body, for as much as I have been betrayed by it.  Trusting someone else with it is harder still.  This means talking about sexual experiences and fantasies fall into a similar camp--my brain says it's not safe, equating arousal with danger, since it's all a part of the sympathetic nervous system, such is the joy of PTSD in my case (a bit more on that here).

So the result is I don't engage.  Or if I do, it's only in small doses, because, confusingly enough, sometimes it's completely fine and I don't mind being proxy to the conversation at all--I have yet to figure out the pattern.  And the result on the outside is that I am accidently a bit of a prude.  Not because I think the subject matter is improper or wrong, but because I genuinely cannot engage with it, for the swallowing ache of PTSD.  I am activated, my sympathetic nervous system screaming that I am profoundly unsafe, recalling complicated grief. 

I can't pinpoint what I need in those moments; I can't even identify what I would want said to me.  It's just a moment when the grief surprises me, where a wave rolls up and smacks into me on an otherwise clear day.  The situation is not predictable enough that I can censure anyone or any specific topic--but I have drawn occasional lines ("That's enough") in individual situations.  I feel so obviously broken in those moments, but I would say the bulk of them are wholly under the radar.  Again, I don't necessarily want the conversation to stop just to check in, but in the same breath, that widens the disconnect all the more.  In those overthinking spaces afterwards, though, I do wonder if that is misconstrued, that not engaging means I may be more likely to be excluded from certain conversations or left out of an invitation to play Cards Against Humanity.  

This particular grief stems from a feeling of disconnection, disconnection from "normal" body function, assumptions of the world, accepted ideas of security, perceptions of how the body can be used and enjoyed, and even a disconnection from the sense of self that I used to have.  This grief is a process, another space where radical reacceptance of my situation is needed daily, hourly.  Even as I continue to find good avenues for processing, there will always be spaces that require extra attention--extra energy--than I may have expected for a situation.  

Again, I have nothing actionable to share, no requests for future changes or subject avoidances specifically.  If anything, perhaps a generic "don't assume my motives," at most.  This was more a means to explore and name these feelings, to name another place where my disability has irreparably changed a part of my identity.  Ignoring pain delays healing; labeling the disconnection breathes new understanding; and in the meanwhile, I find my safe spaces to process, titrating peace in chewable increments.