Outside the binaries
Bold statement time: the current, modern medical model gives a “stamp of health” on how well you can adhere to a set group of norms.
I’ve spoken of this a few times, that the fun game of compliance within the medical system (a system where the survival of transplant recipients depends on playing well) is also a game of how well can you listen to what you’re told and not talk back?
It’s a game of sit down and listen, hand your authority to someone outside of you, follow the rules. But who decides the rules? I didn’t decide the rules.
Some of the rules make sense. You can get from point A to point B within logical thinking fairly easily. And there are other rules, rules and systems and guidelines set in place by years of patriarchy and institution and ego, that don't make sense. What I want for my life, what I find an acceptable level of risk, might not line up with you, and that’s ok. But the stamp of approval, whether or not you’re doing ok, doesn’t come from my feelings of living in my body. It’s based on all this external stuff, and the general feeling of the general population coupled with a lot of other systemic narratives. I’m not saying it doesn’t have a place, and the objectively clinical nature of medicine is something I’m growing to appreciate as my brain doesn’t function that way on its own. I’m dropping the question into the ecosystem that exists of what if there was more?
Recently, after a long bout of illness, I’ve started walking again. I’m slowly regaining my strength and increasing my endurance, and another thing I’ve noticed as I walk is things are beginning to shift and shake in my internal landscape. Movement is freedom in me.
One of the ideas that started to emerge in me, from the roots of both somatic ecology and various embodiment lineages, is this of not only playing to the system and how well you can adapt to a system in order to survive but the medical industrial complex (and a lot of other things) operate in terms of binary.
And what happens when you don’t fit in the binary?
What would it look like to hold complexity?
There was a moment, after figuring out what was going on with my body and the initial panic had mostly passed, where I was holding so much complexity and heaviness and emotion. And it felt like this come to Jesus moment where I knew what I knew and I knew what I didn’t know, and I knew no one was going to come help me and that the medical system as it exists didn’t have the capacity to honour this level of complexity. My body is the complex thing, and for once I don’t want to just eradicate it. I want to thrive inside of it.
The medical model as it is currently set up inside a capitalistic society isn’t one that promotes healing but promotes productivity. What do you need to fall back in line? This contributes to toxic ableism, and to reject this binary often leaves one stranded without support or resources.
To step outside of capitalism, outside societal norms and body norms, is no small thing. Sometimes it’s even impossible.
I think of symptomology and the wisdom it holds, that all these things that exist in the body that we write off or make an attempt to eradicate actually being doorways.
And I was really, really, really uncomfortable. I am. In no way am I saying this is fun, but I will tell you what happened when I started looking at myself outside the model I was handed: life began to emerge. I realized I didn’t fit in the system because I was never meant to, and began handing myself the keys to unshackle the chains I’d worn for years. It’s messy, and painful, and the truest thing I know.
