The Body Knows
The Body Knows It’s strange, isn’t it—how we can tell when a single strand of hair, not our own, clings to our skin. It’s weightless, nearly imperceptible, yet our nerves tingle with its foreignness. Our brain maps us so thoroughly, so intimately, that even the smallest inconsistency sounds an alarm. Like the brush of a spider leg on bare skin, we react before we can think. Instinct kicks in. We swat it away, we shiver, we know it doesn’t belong. It’s not logic—it’s survival. That’s embodiment. Not something mystical—something primal. Animal. We know where we end and the world begins. We know when something is on us, and when something is not us. We know our bodies—not because we looked in a mirror, but because we live inside them. So when I say something is missing between my legs, I don’t mean it metaphorically. I mean it the way you’d know if a finger went numb, or a tooth fell out, or your voice came out of someone else’s mouth. And when I say my breasts felt foreign,...