I have this recurring daydream where I’m in a terrible accident and have one of my legs amputated. Sometimes both of them are gone, and I’m pushed around in a wheelchair by my husband, who assures me he still loves me just the same as he always did. As he wheels me around I look down at the nothingness that used to be my ability to run and dance, and I try like hell to remember what I looked like and felt like with all my limbs intact. In the dream I love them, my poor hacked-off legs, with a passion generally reserved for treasured family members and dark chocolate. I concentrate on that loss until the yearning for what I had is palpable. Then I let the dream go.
Because, like I said, it’s not a nightmare. It’s not something I wake from in a sweat, wiggling my toes under the blankets to make sure I’m still in one piece. It’s a daydream. I force it on myself once in awhile, in the light of day, in an attempt to regain my sense of thankfulness for having been blessed with a healthy body. Because it’s a body I’ve been so hopelessly insecure about my whole life that it’s paralyzed me from doing and wearing and feeling the things I should, which I know is pointless, annoying and sad. Hence the daydream.
And yet.