For Christmas, I received a pair of socks. So far, so standard to the point of boring. However, these weren’t just socks to hide away in boots or to put on when I need an extra layer – but ones with a very specific, personal pattern curving up the length of them: a softly swiveled set of (what looks like) vertebrae, white on black, x-ray style. I’d asked for a pair with books on them – but instead of the spines of hardbacks, I got some proper spines instead.
To accompany the images of these beauties, I wanted to use a piece I wrote last year, when I was going through a tricky-ish patch body confidence-wise (more on that at some point soon). It was an article commissioned for a zine put together by both the excellent photographer Eleanor Hardwick, who I've modelled for a few times, and all round amazingly lovely human being Olivia Aylmer - who I miss quite a lot now she’s moved back to America. The zine was called Shapeshifting – with all contributions on that theme (you can read a feature about it on Dazed Digital). I contributed a personal essay called ‘Metamorphosis’ - paying particular attention to the rhythm and balance of my sentences.
I hesitated before putting it up here though, my internal critic going, “Oh god, not another bloody piece about your back? You’ve posted so much on that previously. Booooring.” But you know what? I live with my two thirds surgically fused spine day in and day out. Most of the time I'm not directly thinking about it, but that central column is always there, holding me up. It's what makes long days in the library uncomfortable, standing up for several hours at gigs a tough(ish) task, and heavy bags more of an aching burden. It's also what made me, to a certain extent, in that it's informed both my life and my work pretty significantly.
Besides, this is still a piece of writing I’m damn proud of, and words are my primary way of unpeeling and reviewing various experiences. Thus it's also a subject I’ll probably continue to return to in years to come, seeing it through other lenses as I grow. In fact, there are already elements of what I said in this essay that I’d now approach differently, feelings I captured then that no longer apply in the same way.
Besides, this is still a piece of writing I’m damn proud of, and words are my primary way of unpeeling and reviewing various experiences. Thus it's also a subject I’ll probably continue to return to in years to come, seeing it through other lenses as I grow. In fact, there are already elements of what I said in this essay that I’d now approach differently, feelings I captured then that no longer apply in the same way.
So here it is. Another set of reflections, another angle, another view…
Metamorphosis
If I define myself through my body, what am I? Arms, legs, a head, a heart, a set of cells renewing themselves? A shin often covered in bruises, cheeks that pink up after a single glass of wine, a height placing me taller than many others, curly hair that frizzes in rain? A muddle of desires and hungers and functions and sensitivities, just like everyone else?
Above all these details, there’s something else that comes first though – my spine. I’ve got a more intimate relationship with mine than most. It’s usually a component taken for granted, the hidden scaffolding holding up the rest of the skeleton. Like many other internal parts of the body, it’s often only dwelt on when it goes wrong. That’s what happened with me. I’ve seen multiple x-rays of mine, spent months unable to ignore its morse code message of aches and pains, eventually let a surgeon cut through my skin and nerves to manually set it straighter before stitching me back up.
The reason? Scoliosis. One year my spine decided to stop growing upward and began curving out to the side instead. Diagnosis came at fourteen. This process of twisting was labeled ‘idiopathic’ - no known cause. Just happens. That’s the way it is. Being female and teenage, I was among those most likely to be affected. Part of a statistic. That was little consolation though. I knew no-one else who had been through what I was experiencing. My friends were concerned about their boobs and newfound curves as their hips grew and their heights shot up. I was distraught as my rib cage shifted, my hips became uneven and my right shoulder blade stuck out into a lopsided wing. Others around me fretted over weight, I curled up in bed and cried at the hurt, the seeming injustice of being physically set apart.
I didn’t want to accommodate my shape. At school I was hyper-aware of how it looked in my uniform, my shoulder bulging beneath my horrible acrylic school sweatshirt. At home I hid it beneath silk shirts and big belts, hoping it might be invisible behind folds of fabric. I say ‘it’ for a reason – I wanted to separate myself off from it, not have to be responsible for my own physicality. I became increasingly envious of anyone with a straight back and symmetrical set of shoulders. They represented an ideal of normality that I couldn’t access.
It took roughly nine months between discovery and surgery. It’s a quicker trajectory than usual, but by the time of the operation my spine had bent into an S-shape measuring 80 degrees (think of straight as being 0). The solution involved two titanium rods screwed into my spine to keep it straight-ish for the next six months as artificial bone graft grew over the vertebrae, forming a solid mass. I was in intensive care for a night, hospital for a week and off school for two months. I relied on others to look after me, feed me, help me to learn to walk again. It was an odd experience full of intense trauma and pain, a small pocket of time where ‘usual’ life was suspended and left to hang. I experienced great kindness from some, bemusement or awkwardness from others.
Now, several years on, the middle of my back is a fused line of bone. I have a scar that runs its length, a pearlescent souvenir. The remnants of my metamorphosis can still be seen. My back remains uneven, my rib cage prominent, my waistline undefined. It is easier to deal with the skin, the scar, than it is with the structures that remain beneath.
It has been bewildering to inhabit so many shapes – my body changing form, without time to accommodate or acclimatize. I had a double metamorphosis – first from straight to curved, then from curved to mildly skewed. Sometimes I can look back on my pre-surgery body with a kind of unsettled awe, seeing the beauty in the twisted flaws. There is something compelling in the few snaps I have of my back, taken on self-timer in our bathroom just before surgery. All the usual lines have been disrupted, re-drawn with odd shadows and highlights. At other points the recollections hurt too much. It took me an incredibly long time to reach a sense of peace with my body’s appearance – and it’s a peace that can still disappear now.
Occasionally I think of the scar as a zip. I imagine unzipping that silver line of flesh to find the hunchback still hiding beneath. Because it stays, even after fusion. Physically it’s much reduced, but the emotional resonance lingers: the vulnerability, the feeling of being out of control, of not quite having ownership over one’s own body as it alters. I can be proud and strong and grateful, yet I carry these elements too - walking my own personal crooked mile.
With the socks - a present from my mum - I'm wearing a vintage sixties LBD, necklaces that belonged to one of my great grandmas (can't remember which one!) and a vintage hat bought from a market stall. The heels were from a charity shop. The matching curve of mossy grass in the lane behind: fortuitous.
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