HIDE AND SEEK - EXCERPT FROM BEDSIDE MANNERS
Text by Alana Moy
I wonder why I am a monster. Gravitation underneath my skin—a secret truth or lie—through my teeth till they haunt dreams of what beauty could look like.
Buried under a mask of generational debt, they came to me then, when I was 15; disconfigured into someone unknown, dangling in hell. What did I do? To be punished like this.
At 15, God forgot to answer the prayer of a prayer of a prayer. God, rather, had routine to run—to cradle, grace, and bless greed. Thank God, without the tribulation of deformation of all I ever knew…to work, be stable, and be mine. I wouldn’t have the story of how God never answered, of how pain never evaporated, and of how the world was set on fire to beget my freedom.
At 15, I was fed up. Disturbingly, it wore on my face. Not by choice, as it rarely is, but by the unfolding of god’s timing.
On a plane, in descent, at 14, the right side of my face was pulled from the inside out. In shock, alone, and away from familiarity, I sat in silence, washing over the damage with tears.
Skin intact; however, if prolonged, I’d regret being hasty.
Hands clenched on armrests, eyes scrunched shut, I waited for the end of what I thought was mine. The plane landed, my eyes opened, and my face let go of the punishment for which I could not name.
Time passed, and my discomfort lingered—I’m finally taken seriously; soon I’ll get to see the doctor.
This mass in my face, odd and undetectable, gave the doctor pleasure to discover and remove. I waited a year till he could perform surgery; summer came, and I was performed on. Successfully, the doctor removed what was creating a black hole, concealed by my cheek, upon pressurizing. I wanted nothing more than to recover from the uncertainty of the self-destruction that materialized inside me.
In the mirror, the external, conventional validation I once knew did not comfort me; I met someone else, someone that I’ve always known yet never seen. A stranger now harbored my soul.
Lying in bed, I questioned God, how could you take my face? The only part that I could hide behind, the only part that brought me acceptance and safety. Spitting blood, injected with opioids, and still in the silence of all, I couldn’t forget. Maybe I do have a problem. Maybe I am somehow demonic.
And so, the days passed, and the silence shamed me. The revelation of introspection over and over was inescapable. Maybe I did deserve this. Maybe God is facetious. I met the shadows who pulled strings of self-sabotage and betrayal. I met the fire that burned just to extinguish the oxygen—all while school punished my absence with the possibility of failing, at 15. My nightmares came true; I was exposed, insides worn out, and though nobody cared to notice, I knew it was over. My beautiful mask wore off, leaving me with monstrosity.
Time passed, the face I knew began to resurface, but I never looked at her the same. I had fought my demonic case, alone in the dark with a stranger, where she, with God, came back to mock me as I faced the repercussions.
I could not perform. And yet, in the shell of who I was, family, friends, and strangers wanted to keep me there to their benefit. The melting mask uncovered an untamable essence that confronted them and myself, and so I was taken in doses, for what my desperation of connection could scavenge. Loved one day, hated the next, I became a character who should wear perpetual happiness
I did not know who to be at 15. Thinking I was myself, though fighting for permission. I felt entropic, and all I could cling to for relativity was my body and the validation from others that kept me on a leash.
After years of surviving, undoing, repairing a dysregulated nervous system, and denouncing what others deemed unstable, evil, and exploitative, I look at this condition differently. I love my shadows; they inform truth, and don’t hide behind a mask of a stranger or old protector. Rather, present in acceptance, of the inside out. A place I could not reach if I hadn’t been 15, and now 23.
This deemed ill and once demonic mind and body are grotesquely one with god and repulsively beautiful.
