OhJoySexToy

Those Beliefs That Root Down in Childhood

Added 2019-01-12 17:52:28 +0000 UTC

When I was very young, I had this dream.

I must have been under 10 years old, because I woke up in my Old Bedroom, which means my family still lived in the Old House, so I’m guessing I was probably somewhere between 6-8 years old. In my dream, one of my fingernails had come off and underneath there was this mass of small, white, wriggly worm creatures. It wasn’t a nightmare, more of a matter-of-fact situation, and for years and years and years I just had it in the back of my mind that underneath our fingernails there is a nest of crawly bug things.

I’m 35 years old and I know that’s absurd, and yet, subconsciously I know, I just know, that if I lose a fingernail I’ll see what I saw in my dream, just like I know that if I scrape my knee, blood will come out. It’s just the way our bodies work, under skin is blood and under nails are worms.

As a child I didn’t think I was real, that I didn’t actually exist, except for when I could see my own reflection or I showed up in photographs. But when I had that proof in front of me, I could literally see that, yes, there I am, I do exist in the world like the other people I see.

Even though, obviously, I know worms don’t live under my nails and that I exist in reality, those beliefs that say otherwise are still so firmly embedded in the back of my brain and I don’t think I’ll ever fully shake them. That’s where the obsessive documentation of my life comes from, the autobiographical comics and journal blogging and self-portraits. If I can see that I existed, if I can hold the evidence in my hands, then it’s there, there’s the proof, I’m real. I mean, I know I’m real (I wouldn’t have to pay taxes if I weren’t), but I can see I really am REALLY real.