Dear Body, Dear Me
Dear Body, Dear Me,
If I close my eyes and press rewind and watch my life get pulled backwards, I see my body start to shrink. My limbs grow shorter and smaller, my features softer, less-defined. I go back through high school, right back through my awkward phase, pronounced chubby cheeks, braids, and freckles all return.
Once I started playing sports, running with reckless abandon, kicking, throwing, passing a ball, being part of a team, teammates turn quickly into friends, my body was my favorite toy. The ability to look across a field or court, and with just a glance direct the ball to a particular spot was my favorite talent. It felt like my body came pre-programmed with that hand-eye coordination. I was never graceful, never particularly fast, or particularly anything but all around athletic. In the thick of action, my body would start out-pacing my mind and the clumsy thought process would quiet and give way to reflex and muscle memory. The love of that feeling has never stopped. The stress release of it, the value of using my body to do, is one of life's most cherished experiences for me.
I don't remember thinking much about what my body looked like until 4th or 5th grade. During a school convocation, my friends and I were talking about our shorts and for the first time, I realized that size matters. Some of us wore size 12 and some size 14 and though no one said it, we all got the feeling that it would be better to be a size 12. That was the first moment I can recall of feeling that the skin I was in wasn't right.
My middle school body was still full of enthusiasm, but awkward from the outside in. I had 3 older sisters who were each true beauties in my eye and I couldn't see any resemblance between them and me. At some point during those years, I accepted the fact that I wasn't going to be pretty. I don't know why or at what moment, but that's what I came to realize. That was when I started thinking, body, that I shouldn't accept compliments on your behalf. Certainly, any compliments must be pity. I was not naturally inclined to any interest or talent with fashion or makeup. I never knew how to do my hair in a way that I thought was right and I just guessed with makeup. You were changing so fast, body. I was excited by growing bigger, taller, and stronger. I grew out of my clothes with every season. You grew long legs that at first felt more like stilts. It took a lot of practice to walk without tripping. You got your period and startled me by making a place for me among grown women. I never accepted your attributes, body, because I was already so convinced that magazines were law and boys' choice was written in stone. I truly felt like a different species than the celebrities on magazines and no guys ever showed any interest in me, either. That confirmed it beyond a shadow of a doubt, you were not attractive.
High school was better. I eventually grew into my looks. During my last couple of years, I swung on a pendulum. On one side, I liked the way I looked and I loved the way I could play sports, lift weights, pursue goals, and be tough. On the other side, my weight. I began to categorize your existence in two strict, uncomfortable places, gaining weight or losing weight. When I was gaining weight, I felt disgusting. Since I was in that phase, I would feed you junk and lots of it. When I was losing weight, I felt excited and confident, and you got way more attention. I liked the way you looked when I started losing weight. You had sleek lines, you had long, willowy muscles. Your facial features emerged from chubby cheeks, a jawline coming out from a soft pillowy neck like a sleight of hand.
I didn't like being so obsessed by your weight. I think I knew then that I had made a mistake somewhere along the way and fallen into a bad relationship between you and me. But by that point, I didn't care. Almost nothing was as important, or satisfying, as being thin.
This rollercoaster, both physical and emotional, continued in college and beyond. I shovel junk food into you when I am anxious, depressed or overwhelmed. Then I stop moving you around, taking you outside, and worry about taking you out socially. All along, I feel a sense of betrayal. Because, deep down, what I really think about you, what I am fighting to think about you, is a fulfilling, proud, bursting love.
I love my thick hair, so full that it has to be restrained and thinned with each haircut. I love arms that can snap a tennis serve. I love a face that carries such a joyful smile and a happy disposition. I love my breasts that make me feel kindred with womankind, that are the start of soft female curves, the top of an hourglass. I love the way they worked around the clock to spin food into gold and make milk for my son. I love a stomach that has no allergies, allows me to enjoy food, and is a soft pillow to rest on. Hips that power a baseball swing, tennis swing, basketball slide, and also house a womb, a fortress hard and secure to the outside, but soft and nurturing inside. I love my uterus and ovaries that work like a metronome, setting a rhythm to my weeks, months, and years. I love knowing that life's potential runs through me. In those tiny spaces are the seeds of ultimate joy. I love legs to run, to carry my body through city sidewalks, but especially through nature's paths. On training runs that grow each week, or on hikes up a mountainside. I love to feel the contraction of thigh, hamstring, and butt, pushing me up, higher and higher, starting to burn and sweat. I love hands and feet that allow me to navigate large movements, finesse movements, or to grip and hold on.
I love the joy I get from putting my body in action. I love telling my mind to tell every body part that we are getting ready to lift. That each and every muscle will contribute, tense, push, or pull. I love the spike in self-assurance I get when I play sports, see myself in the mirror moving heavy weights around, or catch my naked reflection as I walk from the bedroom to bathroom.
Body, you were the vehicle to my dreams. You suffered immensely as you sheltered tiny cells, growing, nurturing, and protecting them as they became their own body. I was awed amongst that suffering, to feel movement inside of me. I was hypnotized by love when they placed my boy in my hands. His eyes, his softness, his naked body, my crowning creation.
For him, for the life you have given me, for your beauty which I scoff and deny in the instant it tries to emerge, I feel like a betrayer. I have taught myself well and thoroughly to criticize you, resent you, mistreat you, and long to have you cower under strict control. I wrote a prescription that you could never fill, nor need you. My love for you survives, but I have buried it far away, so that the beating of it is faint. But that love lives and I long to revive it. Body, I love you. You are my true and faithful friend and companion. You have taught me many times that I can rely on your strength, your capability and your grit. You are also beautiful, body. But that is not the best, most important, or most interesting thing about you. I thank you for your service, I love you for the fun we have had together, and I hope I can begin to soothe the wounds of the unfiltered, brash, and bitter diet of negative thoughts on which I have starved you over the years.
If I close my eyes and press rewind and watch my life get pulled backwards, I see my body start to shrink. My limbs grow shorter and smaller, my features softer, less-defined. I go back through high school, right back through my awkward phase, pronounced chubby cheeks, braids, and freckles all return.
Once I started playing sports, running with reckless abandon, kicking, throwing, passing a ball, being part of a team, teammates turn quickly into friends, my body was my favorite toy. The ability to look across a field or court, and with just a glance direct the ball to a particular spot was my favorite talent. It felt like my body came pre-programmed with that hand-eye coordination. I was never graceful, never particularly fast, or particularly anything but all around athletic. In the thick of action, my body would start out-pacing my mind and the clumsy thought process would quiet and give way to reflex and muscle memory. The love of that feeling has never stopped. The stress release of it, the value of using my body to do, is one of life's most cherished experiences for me.
I don't remember thinking much about what my body looked like until 4th or 5th grade. During a school convocation, my friends and I were talking about our shorts and for the first time, I realized that size matters. Some of us wore size 12 and some size 14 and though no one said it, we all got the feeling that it would be better to be a size 12. That was the first moment I can recall of feeling that the skin I was in wasn't right.
My middle school body was still full of enthusiasm, but awkward from the outside in. I had 3 older sisters who were each true beauties in my eye and I couldn't see any resemblance between them and me. At some point during those years, I accepted the fact that I wasn't going to be pretty. I don't know why or at what moment, but that's what I came to realize. That was when I started thinking, body, that I shouldn't accept compliments on your behalf. Certainly, any compliments must be pity. I was not naturally inclined to any interest or talent with fashion or makeup. I never knew how to do my hair in a way that I thought was right and I just guessed with makeup. You were changing so fast, body. I was excited by growing bigger, taller, and stronger. I grew out of my clothes with every season. You grew long legs that at first felt more like stilts. It took a lot of practice to walk without tripping. You got your period and startled me by making a place for me among grown women. I never accepted your attributes, body, because I was already so convinced that magazines were law and boys' choice was written in stone. I truly felt like a different species than the celebrities on magazines and no guys ever showed any interest in me, either. That confirmed it beyond a shadow of a doubt, you were not attractive.
High school was better. I eventually grew into my looks. During my last couple of years, I swung on a pendulum. On one side, I liked the way I looked and I loved the way I could play sports, lift weights, pursue goals, and be tough. On the other side, my weight. I began to categorize your existence in two strict, uncomfortable places, gaining weight or losing weight. When I was gaining weight, I felt disgusting. Since I was in that phase, I would feed you junk and lots of it. When I was losing weight, I felt excited and confident, and you got way more attention. I liked the way you looked when I started losing weight. You had sleek lines, you had long, willowy muscles. Your facial features emerged from chubby cheeks, a jawline coming out from a soft pillowy neck like a sleight of hand.
I didn't like being so obsessed by your weight. I think I knew then that I had made a mistake somewhere along the way and fallen into a bad relationship between you and me. But by that point, I didn't care. Almost nothing was as important, or satisfying, as being thin.
This rollercoaster, both physical and emotional, continued in college and beyond. I shovel junk food into you when I am anxious, depressed or overwhelmed. Then I stop moving you around, taking you outside, and worry about taking you out socially. All along, I feel a sense of betrayal. Because, deep down, what I really think about you, what I am fighting to think about you, is a fulfilling, proud, bursting love.
I love my thick hair, so full that it has to be restrained and thinned with each haircut. I love arms that can snap a tennis serve. I love a face that carries such a joyful smile and a happy disposition. I love my breasts that make me feel kindred with womankind, that are the start of soft female curves, the top of an hourglass. I love the way they worked around the clock to spin food into gold and make milk for my son. I love a stomach that has no allergies, allows me to enjoy food, and is a soft pillow to rest on. Hips that power a baseball swing, tennis swing, basketball slide, and also house a womb, a fortress hard and secure to the outside, but soft and nurturing inside. I love my uterus and ovaries that work like a metronome, setting a rhythm to my weeks, months, and years. I love knowing that life's potential runs through me. In those tiny spaces are the seeds of ultimate joy. I love legs to run, to carry my body through city sidewalks, but especially through nature's paths. On training runs that grow each week, or on hikes up a mountainside. I love to feel the contraction of thigh, hamstring, and butt, pushing me up, higher and higher, starting to burn and sweat. I love hands and feet that allow me to navigate large movements, finesse movements, or to grip and hold on.
I love the joy I get from putting my body in action. I love telling my mind to tell every body part that we are getting ready to lift. That each and every muscle will contribute, tense, push, or pull. I love the spike in self-assurance I get when I play sports, see myself in the mirror moving heavy weights around, or catch my naked reflection as I walk from the bedroom to bathroom.
Body, you were the vehicle to my dreams. You suffered immensely as you sheltered tiny cells, growing, nurturing, and protecting them as they became their own body. I was awed amongst that suffering, to feel movement inside of me. I was hypnotized by love when they placed my boy in my hands. His eyes, his softness, his naked body, my crowning creation.
For him, for the life you have given me, for your beauty which I scoff and deny in the instant it tries to emerge, I feel like a betrayer. I have taught myself well and thoroughly to criticize you, resent you, mistreat you, and long to have you cower under strict control. I wrote a prescription that you could never fill, nor need you. My love for you survives, but I have buried it far away, so that the beating of it is faint. But that love lives and I long to revive it. Body, I love you. You are my true and faithful friend and companion. You have taught me many times that I can rely on your strength, your capability and your grit. You are also beautiful, body. But that is not the best, most important, or most interesting thing about you. I thank you for your service, I love you for the fun we have had together, and I hope I can begin to soothe the wounds of the unfiltered, brash, and bitter diet of negative thoughts on which I have starved you over the years.
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