In the midst of frustrations with my tragus, I’ve arrived to a realization about my body, and that’s if it reacts with complications to being wounded—i.e. those helix piercings that weren’t healing because I ran my hairbrush through them—it’s not going to heal properly around the wound unless I completely remove the piercing, let the wound heal until the cartilage is new, and repierce so that it heals properly this time without interference. No degree of tea tree oil, Neosporin, or cortisone injections to artificially “treat” the damage is going to reverse it until I remove the source. I have. To start. From scratch. If a single thing runs counter to acceptability, I have to tear the whole operation down and start over. I can pretend in vain to patiently accommodate the problems for a while, try to reason and negotiate with them, but I will recognize in the end that all I’ve done is delay what I inevitably have to do: tear the broken system down.

It frightens me how much my body is like my soul.

We really are soulmates, you & I.