This has been a year of body horror. Turning thirty, while not nearly as traumatic on the very day back in January as expected, has become a bit of a milestone despite her best efforts to avoid cliche.

Thirty was when she had her first (and hopefully last) root canal.

Thirty was when she had her first (again, she hopes last, but fears this is really the first of many) cancer scare.

Thirty was when she not only looked at her own changing body, but also The Mister's with a bit of shock, a bit of revulsion. Just a bit.

Her uneasy truce with her skin shattered. She now feels like a dying tree trapped in the tightening grip of some parasitic growth that has managed to encase her in its foreigness, its utter otherness.

She's caved in in a mountain of puss, bile, shit, saliva, and tears. It moves and shifts at the whims of Nature and she must move along with it to avoid suffocating.

A puppet mistress tangled up in her own skeins of control.

She's glad she only has to see the dentist twice a year if a routine cleaning unearths these kinds of thoughts every time!