6 February 2020

I had the surgery, made it to the other side. I’ll never be venus-bellied again, unless there’s another form of Venus with little decorative scars, which, hey, why not. The wound is open, unsewn, it looks into darkness, a darkness I cannot bear to look into very deeply because it feels so wrong to have a hole on my body. But it’s supposed to heal up, close into itself. While I was in the hospital, one comrade had dreams of demons in the form of whirlwinds, and another comrade dreamt of my dead brother (who he has never met, and whose birthday is 13 days to the year before his), he said to my brother, “I know who you are,” and they both recognized a mutual strangeness between them. My brother’s birthday, and the anniversary of his death, is coming up in a few days.

 

I can’t eat all the things I want to eat yet, can’t even have a cup of tea with caffeine, so it’s toast and chamomile. It’s uncommonly warm for February, but I’m not strong enough to walk yet, except for pottering about in the kitchen to butter toast. I am feeling the cabin fever setting in, and the sincere wish for a strong cup of black tea.

 

I am too lazy to take photos of my incisions, and the great new hole by my navel. I have no one to show them to anymore, anyway, since my Facebook was deleted without warning or explanation. I know this is prime time for getting vulnerable for a cheap little camera lens, but I am so lazy. I wonder about the spring, how it will be to wear breezy clothes more comfortably again, to have my shape again. To be able to get naked in front of someone again.

 

So many dreams lately, but forgotten. The first few nights, it was hard to sleep, but it’s getting better. But once I did find a position in which I wasn’t in too much pain and could breathe adequately, there’d be too many dreams. It’s good for things to pass.

 

I am feeling a little more myself each day. I don’t know who I will be in this next phase. I hope it will be okay, since that is a general enough thing to hope. The surgeon called me today to check on me, she is Icelandic, named Hulda (for secrets), and reminds me of my mother. She was happy to hear I am doing well. She is warm and cold in a way like my mother, and like my mother she and I were bad at saying goodbyes on the telephone, take care and thank you and have a nice day and thank you and take care back and forth. I guess there’s a time for another mother, one who comes into your organs themselves, rearranges them into something new. Venus born from her own entrails. Thanks, secret mother.