My Body

I want to right something super deep and profound. I’m too tired for that, so you cats are get honest.

I’m fucking exhausted. The past three days have been comedies in errors. You know those days where every fifteen minutes something goes wrong. Monday I ended up crying about dropping a can of Pringles.  I had sat down to eat something really quick since both Bionic Mom was being restless and the internet was down and I was randomly having to be lovely assistant, and no one was making it easier on me.

I was soo hungry, and I thought the Pringles were going to be quick. After about four of them, I got paged to be lovely assistant again and dropped the can. Not only did I have forty million things to do, now I had to clean up the Pringles, and I was still so hungry.

As soon as I put out one fire, another would pop up, generally the second I closed my eyes to think I could steal a nap. Now this is the point sancti-mommies scoff and list in their head why they have it so much harder than me. To that I post you this video. Watch it. It is an amazing ten something minutes.

I shouldn’t call them sancti-mommies. Everyone is fighting their own battle. We all handle it different. I can understand the pressure to be perfect could make someone judgmental. I put a lot of pressure on myself, but never to be perfect.

I have my body to think for that.

When you are a girl who is told no one will ever want her because of her weight, when you are a “smart girl,” when you aren’t a “pretty girl,” you teach yourself to hold your body in haughty disdain. You learn to believe your body is just some inconsequential meat suit we use to house the important things: our intelligence, sense of humor, creativity, our kindness, and so on forever. We begin to ignore our bodies. We learn to judge others who treat their bodies with importance.

We tell ourselves the only girls who care about their bodies and being physically attractive are somehow inferior, like they chose wrong. Eventually women like me, begin to ignore our bodies almost completely, except to abusive it by ingesting crap I think will make me feel less emotional pain or fill a hole. I was completely separate identity from my flesh. It was me and not me.

I’m slowly making the journey back into my own body.

Today, there wasn’t water aerobics (I didn’t know since I missed a basically two weeks with illness and Bionic Mom’s surgery,) and I decided to swim laps. A decade and a hundred and fifteen pounds ago, I would swim 15-20 laps. I swam them quickly with relatively few breaks for a fat girl. Tonight, I swam 8-10. It got me thinking all of the shit I’ve done to my poor body.

I’ve spent a lot of time punishing it and ignoring it. I’ve hated it. I’ve wanted to leave it. I’ve cussed it. I truly felt like it was something other than me. I’ve felt it was inconsequential. Up until the Viking came, at best I felt like my body and I had a truce, I would ignore it, if it ignored me, at the worst time, I actively loathed it.

I actively loathed my own flesh. I loathed my own skin, bone, muscle, all of it, especially the fat. When I realize it now, I realize how pretty messed up it is. This body is me. This body helps me experience the world. It connects me to this world.

I had slowly started coming back to my own body when the Viking came along, but he really sparked something in me. I let him love my body. I let him show me how lovable my desperately imperfect body it. I learned that loving with my body was far more complex than sex. I learned that this thing I had ignored and abused had value and worth, just like the rest of me.

Tonight, I was standing alone in the shallow end of the pool looking at the water while I was allowing my body to recover a bit. I was thinking about how out of shape it was. I was thinking of what it had been through. What I had been through since what has happened to my body has happened to me. I am my body. Tonight, I realized I’ve been struggling to recover my body. I’m trying to re inhabit it and rehabilitate it after every thing it has been through, everything I have been through including crippling depression, anxiety, and self-worth issues.

This is my body. I claim it.

When my skin feel the Viking near me, being present in my body is wonderful. When I hold his hand, I thank every deity for my body and the ability to have the connection. Today, when I hurt so badly I want to scream and I haven’t slept well in days, being with my body sucks. It is worth the pain. I am worth the pain. I am worth the care and nurturing.

Now, for the love of all that is holy, will someone please give me a back massage.