I came into this world with my guts exposed and my heart beating wildly. I was ready to live.

They shoved my guts back inside my body, stitching me up, and said “you can’t live that way”. It’s not safe. Your guts are too vulnerable. This world too harsh a climate to safely travel in, so emotionally bulged and unashamed. 

My older selves walked the Earth for decades, our heart beating slowly, quietly, learning not to bare any internal parts of ourselves for fear of being seen as guilty of loudly feeling, fragile, while alive.

Little did I know, I was misdiagnosed. My body tried to tell me.

My face and chest flushed intensely red for decades, crying out the only way it knew how.

In hindsight, no words were necessary. I wasn’t built to be a container, but a conduit. I was red and unready to live anymore.

Rigid or flexible, not flowing almost killed me. All my guts were not meant to be kept inside like that. I was born to expose them. Born to live, learn, move through, and outside myself.

Ripping myself back open, was a painful and necessary surgery.

I am learning to simultaneously sense and guard my unashamed and bulbously digesting pains and joys for all the world to see.

My heart is beating wildly, my blood and I flow freely again, and I am ready to live.