Rebirth
Written by Maij Vu Mai, May 3, 2023
***Author’s note- The following blogpost was written on the eve that NC legislature passed a 12 week abortion ban. Click here for a full statement on the ban by Carolina Abortion Fund.
Image Description: A card from the Aboriginal Healing Oracle Deck , featuring an image of the Spiny-Headed Mat-Rush.
I am shedding and regenerating new skin.
And no, I don’t just mean that metaphysically. I mean that I am literally shedding and regenerating new skin. On my body. On my face, specifically.
This process of shedding and regenerating started this past weekend, during my lil’ escapades in NYC. My doctor calls it “contact dermatitis”
“An itchy, swollen rash caused by your skin's reaction to an allergen or irritant in your environment” (Cleveland Clinic).
Aka, my skin touched something it didn’t agree with and is responding accordingly- by shedding the layers that experienced the irritating agent and regenerating new layers in place of the old ones.
I am shedding and regenerating new skin.
It started off as mildly dry patches, encircling the corners of my mouth. I thought to myself, “well I guess that happens sometimes. Dry skin, nothing new, just put some more lotion on it.” Throughout the day, I could feel the areas tighten in discomfort whenever I smiled underneath my K-N95 mask.
I am shedding and regenerating new skin.
Slowly, but surely, the dry patches extended to my cheeks, to the soft areas underneath my eyes. I found myself touching the areas more often, perturbed by this discomforting occurrence expanding across my body. Facial skin that used to be soft and supple stretched tightly across my cheeks in sporadic, unpredictable ways. “My face is getting these weird dry patches on it, babe” I told my partner timidly. It could’ve been the water in NY, they said. I touched and poked my cheeks some more, before dabbing some vitamin e oil on the dry spots, grateful that people wouldn’t be able to see the mutation spreading underneath the fabric of my mask.
I am shedding and regenerating new skin.
It was my last day in NYC. My skin was drier than it ever was before. I found myself peering in the passenger mirror every time I got into the car, touching and poking and prodding the peeling areas surrounding my eyelids, unsure if what I was experiencing was real or a simply figment of my imagination. I have lived with in this skin for the past 26 years of my life and here I was, interrogating my own body, as if I didn’t put lotion on it everyday, as if I didn’t apply cat winged eyeliner across my eyelids everyday, as if I didn’t look at myself in the mirror every morning and every evening like clock work, everyday.
I am shedding and regenerating new skin.
It finally struck me, when a tear drop fell from the corner of my eye, after trying on some of the most beautiful clothes I have ever seen in my life. I was crying because I knew I was changing. I was crying because I was transforming. I was crying because even though my skin was breaking and peeling and shedding in disturbing ways, I had never seen my brown skin highlighted so effortlessly in a dress that my partner had called “a winner.”
“It just brings out your skin tone so well,” they said.
I was crying because I believed them. I was crying because they were telling the truth. I was crying because I know the type of person I am- I soak in every new experience like it’s my last. Touch a piece of fabric and it becomes a part of my alchemical properties. Experience a texture and it never leaves my memory. Taste a drop of freedom and everything else tastes like dust across my palate.
I am shedding and regenerating new skin.
“What was it like, to see me try on these clothes?” I asked them.
“Well. I could tell that you were screaming. But…I could also tell that…you loved it. But you didn’t want to love it. You felt powerful.”
Screaming. I was screaming, on the inside. In the midst of stripping off old layers and trying on these new ones, I was I screaming. Because I knew that once I put those new layers on, there was no turning back.
Change requires sacrifice.
Not the self-martyrdom type of sacrifice. The sacrificing of myths and narratives that no longer serve you, but felt quite comfortable with type of sacrifice.
Change includes loss.
Not the “you gotta lose yourself to oblivion” type of loss. The law of equivalent exchange type of loss.
“Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange.” (Alphonse Elric, Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood).
Aka, you shed old skin in order to gain new skin.
What’s that line in the Bible, again?
“And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.” (Mark 2:22, New International Version)
Change invites grief.
Because Healing involves Change and Change involves healing and Healing often involves Grief. Because there is a recognition that something loved was loss. And boi- have I experienced loss this year.
What are you afraid of, Maij?
“I am afraid that the people I love will not be able to love my changed self.” (a quote from Maij’s personal archives of madness)
I am shedding and regenerating new skin.
I finally accepted my transformation when I felt the salt of my tears sting the inflamed skin underneath my eyelids. The pain was too sharp to deny anymore. I had gone through experiences, relationships, and dynamics that didn’t agree with my body anymore. My body was responding, screaming, and expressing discomfort in these realities. The skin was swelling, expanding, turning red, and flailing in the air around me.
My body was shedding the old layers, so that it could accommodate the new.
I am shedding and regenerating new skin.
Last night, I dreamed of human monsters who took on the skin of their prey, in order to lure their victims in before they ate them. I shared this disturbing dream with my partner the next morning, seeking comfort.
“It’s a moth man,” they responded matter of factly via text message (for context, I date two Scorpios and a Leo, and this is, indeed, one of the Scorpios).
What my partner was referring to, was a conversation that we shared over breakfast earlier that week. During this conversation, I was sharing with them my ability to take on and absorb the experiences around me for my own transformation- which is a scary and overwhelming experience at times. My partner then proceeded to tell me about a special caterpillar that learns how to fool ants- the predators that would normally eat them- for its own transformation.
First, the caterpillar creates “a sweet honey membrane” that would attract ants to them. Then, the caterpillar “takes in air and releases it- imitating the distressed call of a Queen ant,” which hypnotizes the ants with pheromones. In response, the ants attempt to rescue the pretend queen by carrying it back to their home base, where the caterpillar continues its performative facade, fooling a home filled with predators that would normally devour her. But they don’t- and actually the opposite happens (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JoEWdV7tpQ)
The caterpillar devours the babies of its predators, until it grows 100x its original size. At some point, it becomes a chrysalis and a year later, it performs “it’s final trick,” emerging from its chrysalis to become a large, blue butterfly. A butterfly species that at one point, existed on the verge of extinction.
“I’d love to know what makes it adaptable from extinction now” my partner said.
“That’s a beautiful question to ask about marginalized people” I responded.
What makes Black people adaptable from extinction now?
What makes Queer and Trans people adaptable from extinction now?
What makes our agency, our autonomy, our liberation adaptable from extinction now?
What ants do we trick with our cries, so that they can take us into their homes, where we steal, eat, and absorb their larvae and grow for our own ultimate transformation? - The Majestic Maij
Tonight, NC legislature passed a bill banning abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy (Click here for a full statement on the ban by the Carolina Abortion Fund).
I am shedding and regenerating new skin.
My skin is still dry and taut across my face, but the swelling has gone down significantly and new molecules break across the surface everyday. I gently scrub and moisturize it with the prescribed ointment, to facilitate its regeneration process. It glimmers slightly in the sunlight and slowly becomes supple again.
