from ✿ Petals of Kamila
My body has never lied to me. It only waited patiently for my mind to stop asking for permission.
I learned desire before I learned guilt. My body reacted long before my mouth knew how to explain it, long before my thoughts were shaped into something polite and acceptable. There was a time when sensation was just sensation. Warmth meant warmth. Curiosity meant curiosity. Nothing needed justification. Nothing needed forgiveness. My body spoke in a language that didn’t require witnesses, and I trusted it without even knowing I was trusting something. It felt like breathing. It felt like being alive without commentary.
Then morality arrived. Not as wisdom, but as noise. As interruptions. As raised eyebrows and careful pauses. As that small tightening in the air when I spoke too freely. Suddenly there was a “should” where there used to be only a “feel.” Suddenly my body became something that needed supervision. And the strangest part is that my body never changed. Only the way people looked at it did. Only the way I was taught to look at myself did.
Morality always felt borrowed to me. Like clothes that fit well enough to pass but never belonged to my skin. My body, on the other hand, felt inherited. Something ancient. Something that remembered before I remembered. It knew when something was safe without a checklist. It knew when something was wrong without a debate. It didn’t scream. It withdrew. Or it opened. And I learned that this quiet intelligence was far more precise than any rule I had memorized.
I used to think trusting my body would make me reckless. That’s what everyone implied. That instinct was chaos. That sensation was dangerous. But the opposite happened. The more I listened inward, the more selective I became. My yes became rare and deliberate. My no became calm and unapologetic. Trusting my body didn’t make me wild. It made me exact.
Shame entered my life through commentary, not through experience. Through faces that shifted. Through jokes that landed a second too late. Through questions that weren’t really questions. My body had never felt wrong until it was narrated. Until it was explained to me. Until desire was translated into something suspicious. I didn’t discover shame. I inherited it from other people’s discomfort.
Morality loves absolutes. Bodies live in nuance. Bodies understand timing. Pressure. Breath. The difference between longing and readiness. The difference between curiosity and fear. Morality wants clear lines. Bodies speak in gradients. And I have always trusted gradients more than borders.
There were moments when my body said yes while my morals hesitated, and I followed the hesitation out of politeness. I followed it out of obedience. And those are the moments I regret more than any reckless decision. Because the regret wasn’t about what I did. It was about what I silenced. About how I chose permission over truth.
My body has never asked me to be “good”.
It has only asked me to be honest.
When I fell in love with a woman, something in me stopped arguing. There was no internal negotiation. No convincing. No performance. My body didn’t debate. It recognized. It softened into certainty. And I understood then how often my morals had been louder than my knowing, how often I had treated instinct like a dangerous suggestion instead of a compass.
People think trusting your body is anti-ethics. I think it is the deepest form of ethics I know. One rooted in consent that isn’t theoretical. In respect that isn’t performative. In attention that isn’t taught, but remembered. My body does not want harm. It wants coherence. It wants alignment. It wants to move without splitting me in two.
Desire is clean before it is explained. Explanation is where it gets dirty. Where it becomes something that must be defended or justified. My body never asked to be defended. Only listened to.
I don’t want to be righteous. I don’t want to be admirable. I don’t even want to be understood. I want to be accurate. Accurate to the way my breath changes. Accurate to the way my skin responds. Accurate to the quiet yes and the quieter no.
Morality wants me polished. My body wants me present.
And if I have to choose between being good and being true, I will always choose the place where my body stops whispering and finally feels heard.
