Things that gross me out: 
Loogies.
Condiment nozzle crust.
Donating plasma and feeling the hot collection tube on my arm. 

Things I am weirdly okay with: 
Eau de decomposition.
Vacuuming blood from a body cavity. 
Clamping arteries inside a skull. 

I see Doughty’s “A girl always remembers the first corpse she shaves” and raise you PLACING LITERAL ORGANS INSIDE A SPLAYED RIB CAGE.

This is what awaited me when assisting with my first autopsy embalming, but the experience was as chill as filling my Cafe Karuba cup. I expected to be more affected.

My brain (in an attempt to protect me?) kept exclaiming, “Whoa, this feels like a movie set!” 
My heart (in an attempt to focus me?) kept nudging, “This guy was the love of someone’s life.” 

Not once did I tear up or feel woozy. As a girl who once had to lay on the ground when a gnat got stuck in her eye, um, I have questions!

What does it mean that I can behave with casual reverence around something so upsetting? 

Is my body dialed so deeply into self-preservation mode that I can compartmentalize the gross away? 

Or is there something to the reality that this person is no longer living, and therefore no longer suffering, so my soul accepts it?

Perhaps it’s like a house on fire: horrifying when it can still be saved, followed by a grim acceptance after it’s gone.

In other words, the cleanup crew won’t face the demons the firefighters do.

I will never be okay with the debris I find in my car cupholders. I will always dry-heave when I watch the abandonment scene in The Fox and the Hound. But I can mop up human purge like a champ because?

There is no more pain in the room with me.