Day 13: Writing A New Story About My Body

I feel a bit like my body is falling apart. My back started hurting before I left Sioux Falls a week ago, and the more I sat in the car the next few days, the worse it felt. I added insult to injury by helping my friend move two days ago. 

So here I am, sitting in my dad’s recliner, lamenting the loss of my usual mobility. I have a new appreciation for people who deal with chronic pain on a daily basis and somehow manage not to be raging assholes. I’m also thinking over the relationship I’ve had with my body over the years.

It’s been a rocky relationship. When I was something like six or seven years old, some shit happened to me that I’m just starting to remember now. It led to me being at odds with my body.

I learned the harmful message that your body was not something you should enjoy or even like, but rather something you should be ashamed of. In second grade I started gaining weight, and by third grade I began to be bullied for the size and shape of my body. 

You’re going to laugh, but I remember when I was in middle school I thought I was a horrible, sinful girl for masturbating. I was so convinced it was a sinful thing, that I felt the need to tell my parents so I could atone for that sin. I sat on the couch with a blanket curled around me, crying in fear.

When I told them, they had to choke back a laugh. They’d thought something horrible had happened. My parents reassured me that exploring your body was normal and nothing to be ashamed of. 

But over the years I continued to struggle to embrace my sexuality and my body in general. I hated going clothing shopping, having photos taken of me, being in a swimming suit in public. I can’t think of a single time I truly felt at peace with my body. 

Every time I’d feel like I’d made some progress in my fitness journey, I’d see other people who looked better than me. Who were prettier, skinnier, stronger, more athletic. I let the comparison fuel the anger towards my body.

There was the acne, the rosacea, the heavy periods of doom every month. My short, wide feet. My eyebrows that stopped too short on my face.

My senior year of college I gained more weight as I struggled to find my place in the world. That’s also when I started having acid reflux. I was miserable. But I kept pushing through, and just started myself on over the counter medications. 

Last year I was diagnosed with a precancerous lesion of my cervix on my latest pap smear. God I hated my body. What good was it anyway?

My body felt like a never ending source of shame and embarrassment. But when I hit a wall with my PTSD, I realized I couldn’t keep beating the crap out of myself anymore. It wasn’t working.

As I began to face the PTSD, other pieces of my life came back to me. I started to remember things from my childhood. These stories I’d carried with me my whole life weren’t really mine to carry. 

The memory of what happened to me when I was 6 or 7 started to come back. Part of me feels like maybe I’m just imagining it. But there was a sense of relief and grief that came with it.

My body gained weight to try to protect me. It was providing a buffer from the rest of the world. And yet I’d hated it instead of recognizing it was trying to help me.

It wasn’t laziness, lack of motivation, or stupidity that kept me from losing and keeping off the weight. My body was holding onto trauma for me until I was ready to process it. And in a society where processed food is easier to come by than fresh food, where high fructose corn syrup and wheat products are everywhere, and business is prized over wellness, it’s really not that surprising. 

Hating our bodies does absolutely nothing to help us. It only hurts us. They do so much for us, even when we don’t consciously see it. 

And whether we like it or not, as Sonya Renee Taylor points out, we experience our entire life as a body. We live and breathe and walk the planet in a body. There’s no getting away from that until we’re dead or scientists learn how to upload our brains into mechanical bodies.

So I would argue that one of the most important things we can do in our lifetimes is come to love our bodies exactly as they are. Fighting our bodies only puts money in the pockets of businesses that take advantage of our insecurities and try to keep us there.

It’s time to change that relationship. Every day I’m going to try to list the things I’m grateful for that my body does for me. My body lets me pet and play with my dog, hug my family and friends, see gorgeous views, smell delicious flowers, and walk along new paths. 

What does your body do for you?