A glass of my own spit

I’ve always been a little weird about germs, but it’s getting worse with age. I can tell that it’s’ getting worse because I’ve started to get a little weird about my own germs, not just others. I still like pooping at home. That doesn’t really gross me out, but stuff like my own spit is becoming borderline gross to me.


At some point in my life somebody asked me a “would you rather…” question about whether I would rather do something (I don’t remember what), or drink a glass of my own spit. That got me thinking: Why would it be gross to drink your own spit? I knew it would be, but I didn’t know why. Is it the sheer quantity of spit in a glass that is gross, or is it something else? Personally, I wouldn’t even want to drink a teaspoon of my own spit, and I think it’s because once it’s outside of you, it’s not really yours anymore. Like poop. When poop is inside of you, it’s not gross, but you wouldn’t want to play with, or even really spend too much time near it once it’s outside of you. It’s like an annexed part of yourself. An alien.


Here’s where I know I get weird: I’m not really that ok with the idea of my poop being inside of me anymore. It’s like a gross foreign object that’s still inside of me! If I think about this sort of thing too much, it makes kissing, sex, and all sort of other normal acts that involve the exchange of body-stuff seem strange, and sometimes even a little gross. The funny thing is that I’m not really grossed out by blood and guts and body parts. It’s much more about the products of the body for me. It’s the parts that fall off, come out, shed, leak out of you, etc. that rub me the wrong way.


I think I need to do some accepting of biology in my life. I need to realize that dead skin cells, poop, saliva, hair, and stuff like that aren’t toxic or bad (well, poop is pretty toxic...), it’s just bio-stuff. But maybe I’m also just a little strange and need to do some accepting of that as well.


As a side note, this definitely ties into some questions I’ve pondered in my life about the relationship of subject to object. Where does the line between me and the world blur? When is my spit no longer mine? I doubt that genetic material alone is enough to qualify something as “me”. I truly believe that there's no tangible boundary between me and the world (I'm still not sure if there's a less-tangible but equally real one. Soul? Who knows? Not me.), but there's definitely a mind one. The conscious. The self. The poop-stick-problem-causer and person-giver.


The moral of the story is that we’re all gross and life is gross and nature is gross (she’s the grossest bitch of all). But I love her. I love nature, I love life, and I love myself, so whether or not I have a bit of a glitch about body-stuff, it’s ok. Maybe it’s the mind fuck of some part of me (subject) becoming part of not-me (object) that makes this whole thing weird to me. IDK, my BFF Rose.