Written on the body

In an attempt to gain some kind of control over my fibromyalgia, I’ve been learning self-hypnosis, through a series of tutorials on a CD. Part of each script emphasizes that everything your body and mind experiences becomes part of your memory, everything you learn, passively or actively, becomes part of your body.

I imagined that the teacher intended this piece of wisdom to refer to the information on his CD. But then, by extrapolation, has everything I’ve experienced, everything I’ve heard and read and seen, everything I’ve done and had done to me, does that then also become part of my body? The amused smile on the handsome young waiter’s face in St. Jean de Beaulivieux, as l’auteur Americaine ordered cup after cup of café decaffeiné, does that live on, ten years after my trip to France? Is Humbert Humbert scuttling around inside somewhere, stalking nymphets? (And I’ve read Lolita three or four times) Is Hannibal Lecter there? Mary Poppins? The elementary school bully who beat me up on the playground? 9/11? Bad boyfriends? The mean kindergarten teacher who threw me out of class for coloring outside the lines?

Perhaps it is true. My former boss, during a stressful time we’d been going through at work, when the COO of the company, who’d been nickel and dime-ing her and micromanaging her as she was attempting to make an enormous project see the light of day, and generally making her life a living hell, told me that the evening prior, she’d been lying on the chiropractor’s table with a particularly large knot in her back. “He’s inside you,” the chiropractor said, which gave my boss the chills on several levels.

Pretty damned scary thought, if we’re carrying all these people and experiences around inside us, especially since I’m not that big or nearly that strong.

And if it’s true, is there any way to exorcise some of them out? The handsome waiter, I’d keep. The look on my husband’s face, when we met, also a keeper. Basically the whole of our lives together, minus some sticky places, but oh, hell, even those bonded us more strongly together, so I’d keep them, too. Definitely I’d want to lose the hours I blew on several notably bad movies (and I want my money back, too). I’ll keep the first time I saw each of my nieces and nephews. Many more experiences too plentiful to list.

But can’t I get some of the bad things out? The pain of losing those I’ve loved? The horrid boyfriends from my misspent youth? The days when I had to choose between a cup of coffee and the subway ride to work? The ending of “The Horse Whisperer?” (the novel, not the movie)

And if people can learn to channel their energy so they can walk through hot coals without as much as a mark, if there are documented cases of spontaneous healing, can’t I learn to direct the cellular memories of the bad things, say, toward whatever part of my body makes fingernails and toenails and simply grow them out of my body? Paint them purple, then cut them off and discard them?

I only wish.

I’ve been trying over the last year to simply write them out of my body. This helps some. But still, since I haven’t yet found the CD that promises that I can learn how to free myself of nasty experiences wholesale, when I write I have to relive all the pain, the shame, the sorrow. That brilliant sprite of a writer, Brenda Ueland, said, “to write is to taste life twice.” I think she had more pleasant memories in mind. For these things, I want to spit them out and rinse my mouth with bleach.

But for now, until I find that magical tutorial or learn to walk across hot coals, it’s my only solution, my therapy, my salvation.

Hey, if I can learn how to hypnotize myself, maybe I can give myself the suggestion to gather up the bad things and send them out of my body. If you ever see me with purple toenails, then you’ll know I was able to do it.