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​All articles from Black Girl Dangerous and Wear Your Voice Magazine.

Where Do We Go From Here?

after Grey’s Anatomy S11E09

I need a mechanism to protect the body from harm: to face something or to run away, even after I promised you no running. Call it shock, caretaker, whatever you're seeking to stabilize, whatever you need.

I tell my bodyworker that I've had a rough few days: spiraling pain, insomnia, rare clusters of panic attacks. She says she wants to release the nerve blooms, the anastomoses: “a connection or opening between two things (especially cavities or passages) that are normally diverging or branching, such as between blood vessels, leaf veins, or streams” (Wikipedia).

This is all of me: a confluence of nerve endings rippling scar tissue, even as I take my time, I knit together pain and grit and worry about everything but you are never prepared when it comes. What it is, what we can do. Don't make it any harder than it already is. It is already hard.

In this episode, Meredith intuits a tumor on a woman’s pancreas, which secretes insulin and creates wild fluctuations in blood glucose levels, leading to extreme mood swings, impulsivity, bouts of rage and profound anxiety, cognitive deficits, etc. Insulanoma!, she shouts in the operating room. She knew it, she knew it was there, a solution to something scary and hard. Not having control is the worst thing, not having someone when you need someone, not being sick

I need my animal self to become a bright wind