Philosophies

I imagine myself in two different pieces, not that the pieces are separate or that there are different personalities, none of that, instead I imagine my physical body which is the one that handles day-to-day wear and tear and then there is the "Other Self" or, what I refer to as: Emotional Body.

Sometimes, and for purely masochistic reasons, I like to look at my emotional body and poke at the places that are scarred over to see if they still hurt. 

There are times I'm surprised, I think that there are places still bloody and soar and unusable, and when I go back and look I realize that the pain I had assumed was there is no longer there, but just a healed over scar that only hurts if I really work at it. 

The Emotional Body is the one that others can't see, but if it were to be manifested into a physical body one would take a look and clearly see where there have been hurts in the past. "Oh, that must be where that bully told you you were puny and lame" or "that must be the scar from when your first kiss started dating someone else" etc. Everyone's emotional body is different. It's hard to put into words what I think mine must be like, probably similar to what I look like, but not in a way recognizable as human, per se. I guess, to get technical, the emotional body could be called a "soul" but I don't like to think of it like that.

Sometimes, I like to imagine I can map out my own perspective of others' emotional bodies. "They must not be able to handle this situation because they are still dealing with the pain of ____this. " I justify why people act the way they do by imagining that their emotional self is compensating due to their own strengths and weaknesses. 

Cells don't heal this body. There are no limbic systems, no network of nerves, the only thing that can heal this body and regenerate it are:

- relaxation

- routine

- therapy

- and (most importantly) Time.

There are times when I take a good hard look at my emotional self and wonder if the way I am dealing with a situation is because of a real pain, or because my emotional muscle memory has made me walk and move that way. Like, last night: I looked at old pictures from when I was 18 and 19 and dating my boyfriend at the time. There was a long period when I couldn't look at those pictures at all without my emotional body crumbling into a ball of blubbering sadness. I imagined, when that relationship ended, that I had lost an entire arm in that ordeal. I imagined that the emotional body I was dealing with was like dealing with a victim of war; altered in a way that could never be the same. I felt like it took a long time for that wound to stop bleeding, to stop making me sick and to stop making me feel helpless as the emotional body struggled to regain any kind of self reliance. 

After I finished looking at the photos I lay awake in bed and looked at the emotional self again. There were fresh bruises, yes, but overall, She was beautiful! Relaxed, calmer than ever, and shining with a self assurance I had never seen before. 

Oh, hi. Haven't checked on you in a while. You look beautiful. Time, you really did the trick.