It was utterly amazing. I was super stoked. The fear was gone, the confusion was gone. I’d made my peace, found my respect, come to my terms. It was beautiful.

I hadn’t gone to the last two cadaver classes, and I don’t regret that. I was not in the space to go and I refused to force myself to. It turned out to be better, since they let us stay late to review whatever we wanted to, so I got to see the things I wanted to see from the classes I missed at my own pace, which was much faster and more streamlined than that of an instructors. Part of what made the labs difficult for me was the length of time we were in there.

The difference between how we handled things for the first class (only the body part we were looking at showing, avoiding scalp and ear and hands and feet, not having more than one body uncovered at a time) and how we were after 5 labs, exploring openly an entire uncovered cadaver, including their organs and face and brain, was really interesting to observe.

I have more understanding now toward the teachers I felt had treated the bodies offensively at first, who were using their fingers instead of tools to point things out and left one body open while moving on to another one. While they tried and generally succeeded in taking our states into account, they’d just already gotten over all that, where I had still been super sensitive toward the experience and found some manners uncomfortable.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I performed a closing ritual tonight with the bodies we’d come to know, after staying late and most of my classmates having left. Systematically, and without even realizing what I was doing, a classmate and I put them back together. It started with returning the old mans face skin into place. Then, to the woman who was face up, completely undone, and needed to be put back together entirely, including her liver and heart and brain, then finally to the face-down man who’s brain and legs we had been looking at.

It felt natural, interesting, even fun.. and later, was extremely powerful and meaningful to me to have done that, though my initial motivation was ‘Lets see how much we know!’. As far as I know, none of the students had assisted in situating the bodies after lab before. We simply did it, and we did it correctly (yay for education!) because it just felt right, without even really thinking about what it was I was doing.

The woman in particular was potent for me. I’d never really been comfortable with her. She was overweight and very diseased, had many kinds of cancers, and overall she kinda grossed me out. I would feel sadness looking at her, her pathologies, her 11lb giagantic liver, all the adapose tissue she had, her insanely oversized lympth nodes.

When we uncovered her face, though, the skin peeled back except the eyes, nose, and mouth which were not cut away, she changed for me. She looked like a pretty little monkey, with long eyelashes, quiet and noble. It reminded me of how linked we are to other species, how we’re all made of the same basic stuff, and I just felt this sense of wholeness and love. Later, when I placed the skin of her forehead back on her face, I saw that she had the most beautifully sculpted eyebrows I think I’ve ever seen.

Before tonight, I think I had actually touched the cadavers twice. Once, that I vividly remember.

Un-coincidentally I am sure, I had a (living) client in clinic last week who was similar, and smelled really badly. I was impressed and proud to notice that while I was aware of those things, my impulse to judge and focus on them naturally gave way to giving that human being the best massage I was able to give her, through all her strange pathologies and difficult attributes.

In that situation, there had not been any single physical indication that embodied the beauty I felt eminating from her dispite the other stuff, like the eyebrows on our cadaver. However, the sense, and knowing that there was something of beauty and worth there – countless things – even if I wasn’t seeing them on the surface, rang very true for me. This was a person, a human, a living creature, on my table, asking me to do what I could to help them heal. And I did, and I enjoyed it, and I felt good about it afterward.

It isn’t just about surface things. It’s not just about finding something I fancy in how a body looks to make the rest of it bareable. But finding that thing tonight in a perfectly groomed eyebrow (which was actually imperfect and partially overgrown) rocketed something deeper to the forefront, something I had been feeling but couldn’t really place. The good in people is starting to outweigh the bad, subconsciously, for me. After all this time and all this work and all the fears I’ve faced and all the abuse and terrible things I’ve seen and tried to mind over matter, to force away, I can finally feel the scales tipping behind all that. It’s happening for me. I am fucking DOING it! Sometimes I can actually just stand back and go.. wow. I am fucking DOING IT!

Reprogramming to the kind of extent I have been is an extremely substantial undertaking. It’s time consuming, often painful, scary, and sometimes very frustrating and even alienating, and sometimes I feel like I’m just falling flat. But the days of being afraid to touch people, of lacking confidence in my skills and knowledge, of allowing my fear of hurting people and being hurt by them to paralyze me, and of fearing the human body, are slowly but surely fading into the distance. This education, this experience, and this decision I made for myself has brought me everything I wanted from it – a real chance to be truly supported as I transform, to learn what it means for me to have support, and to know how to find it in the future.

I realized the other day, that I haven’t even thought about how I’m going to make back the money I’ve spent on school – it hasn’t been factoring into my plan. This education has been worth every single fucking penny, no matter what it is I do with it on a business level. The single most enriching experience of my life, the first certification program I will have completed, my first school experience since dropping out of high school in freshman year. And there’s more I’m gleaning from this last cadaver, about my personality and growth and hwo I tend to view things, but it’s freakin late and I’m exhausted and want to get this done.

I truly have tapped into a deeper sense of my humanity. And I am an amazing therapist, to boot, as well as one of the last 24 people who will ever graduate from this revered and unique program. Recently, while musing with someone about my tendency to be drawn toward sick animals, I was told that it was because I am a healer. I really hadn’t thought of it that way, but now, I agree.

My final exam is in two weeks. Then, 3 months of business during another round of clinic, and the state exam. The final stretch is thoroughly enjoyable, and overall, my memories of this program are positive and resolved. There’s been so much else in my life going on as well, my only regret is that I let some of those things take more of my attention from school than I would have preferred, in hindsight as well as usually knowing in my heart at the time. But even recognizing that was a great learning experience, not to mention the distractions themselves, and I don’t think I could have asked for more from my $15k, or my 18 months. I was ready, and even through all the other shit that went on I’ve rocked school, and I’ve made lasting bonds that I will remember for the rest of my days, as well as the groundwork to forge many, many more.

Thank you. To the universe, to my former husband, to my boss, to my friends, to my supporters, my teachers, to my challenges, to my failures, my triumphs, and to myself for receiving them all. My life is incredible.

I haven’t written much about school since the first quarter. It just hasn’t been a priority, what with all the learning I’ve been doing. I suppose this deserves some commentary, though honestly i don’t know that I have all that much to say about it. I’ll just write for a bit and see what comes out.

I’ve known about cadaver since I was interviewing massage schools but haven’t thought too much of it in recent months. In the beginning I was doubtful I could make myself do it, but as the program progressed I’ve gained interest and confidence. I haven’t been feeling anxiety about going, or thought much about it, because I’ve suspected any energy I put forth thinking about it would been nullified once I actually got in there. An experience like this is not predictable.

I started getting nervous once I arrived at the University and saw that some of my classmates had had a difficult time in the session before me. I was a little apprehensive as to what I might go through once I got into the cadaver lab, with over 20 bodies on tables. It helped that Bastyr is super respectful of the cadavers, they all wanted to be donated, and that they are returned to their families after service. You could tell there was an aire of great gratitude and respect for the people we would be looking at, and we talked a fair bit before going in.

But that’s just it, really. They weren’t people as I know them. There is no life there. I expected that emptiness to feel sad, difficult. I kept asking myself how I was feeling and checking in, because I wanted to take care of myself, and not ignore something until it was unbarable and I had to work through something tragic feeling. I was present and ready for it – watching for a breakdown. That’s what made it strange, that I felt almost no anxiety, and the twinges I did feel were nearly effortless to manage.

I’ve come to realize that I’ve long equated facing death with facing loss. Perhaps I did face death last night and found it to be much less emotionally taxing and frightening than I anticipated. I’d like to think that’s true, that I’ve grown and progressed into a stable, perceptive person who has come to terms with the concept of mortality as an issue separate from the feelings it tends to generate. That I can now separate the pain of abandonment with the reality that we are organic, mortal beings, just like the ones I’ve come in contact with as pets, as nourishment, dead and living. I felt almost a sense of unity and wholeness if anything. Feeling the circle. I’m glad to be at a place in my life where that’s starting to make sense.

Academically, I found the experience very helpful. The dissections were very well done (we will not be cutting) and to see the musculature, even in a deflated, lifeless state, has brought a profound structural understanding to what it is I am working with, how much deeper I can (and really need to) go, and a real concept of scale.

My biggest challenge has been the fumes from the preservatives. They tend to be most difficult for the liver to process, of which mine is weak from various excesses over the years. I felt very sick after about 10 minutes in the lab, and am utterly exhausted today. I am unable to make a fist, and am experiencing the weakness of a hangover times about 3, without any of the other symptoms. I’m totally wiped out.

I suspect there are emotional aspects lurking about which will surface as my labs progress. We did the back, with much of the bodies draped. I’ve yet to see hands, or feet, or face, which if preserved will bring a reality to the experience that I haven’t felt yet. Though, while looking at the suboccipitals, much the woman’s shaved scalp was showing – that was a little striking. So, I’m not totally clinical and emotionally distant from the situation. I feel steady, stable, perceptive, and calm.

If you had told me 5 years ago that I would voluntarily, and without distress, look at and touch a cadaver, I doubt I would have believed you.

It’s strange how a program that is designed and pretty much guaranteed to give one a deeper sense of humanity has seemed to do exactly the opposite for me. I think I’ve finally figured out why I hate school so much lately, when prompted to think beyond “I’m fucking tired and fasting and bleeding and stupid” now that teachers are noticing and beginning to ask me what’s wrong and why I’m so subdued.

When we first got into anatomy I went through a couple weeks of very strange disorienting sensation of feeling very alien and lonely in the world directly because of what we were learning. I thought it had resolved itself but now I realize it never really did, I was just distracted for a while by lots of technique and communications classes, and then (trying to) memorize lots and lots of muscles.

Seeing the human body as cavities and directional slices of meat, bone, molecules, ducts, systems.. it made me feel pretty gross and disconnected from the universe on a number of levels. The sheer unimaginable complexity (and sometimes utter disgust ) of the human body and how it works hit me hard, and the cadaver photos, videos, and other resources to help us learn deepened my unease with the whole thing and makes me really uncomfortable. Especially these invaluable videos of -fresh- cadavers:

Couldn’t ask for a better learning tool that that for the muscles, eh?

Well, now we’re into the nervous system, and I’m feeling super gross and off kilter again. I am questioning whether I want to know these things at all, and dislike the way the knowledge and concepts are challenging my sense of self. I’m withdrawing, losing interest in the program, losing interest in humans, and losing focus as to what I am learning this for and why. I don’t LIKE knowing about this stuff, it’s fucking traumatizing me.

When the sum of my existence is reduced to chemical reactions within an elaborate and unexplainable machine, I just want to sit and stare and frankly wonder what the point is in being alive at all. I’m finding that I am actually losing motivation the more I know and understand the intricacies of the human body, and believe me as this is an accelerated medical program, it’s in depth shit we’re going into here and it’s getting thrown at us with vigor.

I feel like an android that’s realized she isn’t actually what she thought she was. It feels like my emotional capacity is flushing out of me. It feels like I don’t even believe in emotions anymore, it’s like knowing about the reflex arc and what wires the different lobes of the cerebrum control and REALLY understanding that emotional states are just fucking chemicals sucked the fucking soul right out of me and left this half dead machine on auto pilot to keep running until the battery dies.

I feel absolutely sick with grim amazement. Fascinatingly horrified, almost to the point of paralysis. Being these things worked great when all I had to accomplish in life was to do drugs and keep trying to die, but it’s proving to be quite a struggle having something resembling a healthy life and a new intense relationship to try to nurture. All I want is to be alone. I’m so fucking freaked out.

The beauty and mystery in life is just.. dying, for me, right in front of my face. I don’t know why I’m doing anything right now. I don’t believe. Now I understand why people in medicine have that disinterested glaze over them – They’ve been defeated.

I’m mostly quietly, but rather utterly, consumed with a nagging death wish that I’ve been stuffing down attempting to marginalize for weeks. I’ve been managing some pretty dark impulses, like almost never wearing my helmet when I ride. I’m frequently fantasizing of tipping out my 16 story office window like a limp rag doll, or even the 6 story one at my house with no screen, dreaming of falling, of being shot in the face, of having my head crushed under garbage trucks, wanting to pick physical fights with people on the street, being excessively moody, reactionary, easily disturbed, or unable to be disturbed at all. I’ve slowly but surely begun to implode and become more and more mentally unstable as it drags on. I feel dead already. Why is there so much movement when I feel dead already. It seems my capacity to care about myself and be close to people emotionally is gushing out my pores and into the gutters of the streets I imagine being scraped off of.

I’m so fucking creeped out and lonely. The kind of uncompromising, crushing lonely that comes when one loses their belief in their own fucking sentience. I am scared and all this feels like it’s just bringing up more questions and more fucking inadequacies, things I can’t understand or answer or explain to anyone else. And why the fuck would I explain it they’re just empty walking chemical virus machines without purpose or explanation too , and none of this shit is real. These tears I’m crying aren’t fucking real it’s some gut wrenchingly simple yet complex mechanism thats signaling my hypothalamus to fire off instructions to my fucking eyeballs to leak shit for no real fucking reason because it’s all just a big fucked up game. I think I’m going to throw up. No wonder I’ve lost interest in food..

I feel fucking stupid and weird and weak and incapable and like a god damn sickass crazy person and there’s this morose compulsion to just keep poking at myself like a kid stabbing festering roadkill until I drive myself completely fucking insane.

I think I’m losing it. I think something in my perception broke and the only way I know how to deal with it is to get back to basics and lust over demise like a good little girl.

What the fuck is fucking wrong with me?