Separate but Equal

For years, I have been at war with my body.  I have starved it, gorged it, made it work harder than it was meant to, allowed it weeks of sloth--all the while trying to beat it into submission, as if it were an It, totally separate from the Me.

When I was around seven, my parents went out for a date one weekend, leaving my sister and me with a babysitter.  In addition to baking cookies and watching a scary movie, weighing my sister and I was part of her idea of fun.  I remember what I weighed: 55 pounds.  

55!  

My babysitter said to me: "For your age, that's kind of heavy."

And so began my distrust of my body.  Of course, I had other reasons to distrust it--its inability to run or jump or climb the jungle gym, to name a few--but nothing bothered me at that time more than the weight.  The weight equaled ugliness.  And ugliness equaled unpopularity.  And unpopularity equaled a hopeless, desperate life...in my seven-year-old mind, at least.  

Now, as an adult who spends the majority of her waking hours with teenagers and has had plenty of years to reflect back, I know that popularity does not equal happiness.  And unpopularity does not mean a lack of friends.  And that none of this has to do with weight.

But, back then, unpopularity was catastrophic. As was being heavier.

Of course, little did I know at seven that I would be an early bloomer, and Puberty would greet me two years later at the age of nine, puffing me up with a pubescent layering of fat and size C boobs.  Yes, at nine.

I really was a misfit.  And, although some of you might be thinking that I must have been popular with the boys, I ask you: what does a nine-year-old boy know about boobs?

I remember the first time I ate only an apple for lunch during 7th grade. What power I felt over the self-control and how I loved the attention when people asked me if that was all I were eating.  What a strong person I was.  How they must have envied me...or so I thought.

Thus began the swinging pendulum of my life, knocking over the tiny posts of weight loss and weight gain.  All the while, my mind mistrusting my body but my never really understanding this or even stopping to think about it.

I know I'm not alone here.  In this place of distrust.  In this place of Me vs. It.

I know that, particularly as women, we judge ourselves on our bodies.  Our bodies determine how valuable, powerful, desirable we are. And we compare ourselves to other women...leading to us probably checking out more women than we do men--in order to size each other up, as if happiness were in direct correlation to size.  And we think that the thinnest girls' lives must be the most perfect.  

And,  although I have MD, I have spent years exercising beyond what is necessary, somehow hoping that if I punished my body enough, it would change.  It would heal.  That if only I chiseled at it hard enough, it would be like everyone else's--the normal people.

A few months ago, the same mentor who asked me if I really wanted love also said to me: "Your body is your teacher."

As she said those words, I began to cry.  I had been gypped.  I wanted a different teacher.  A yoga master, perhaps.  A marathon runner.  A tall, waify giraffe-like body.  Not this one.  Not this "damaged," tending-to-be-too-curvy teacher with whom I am constantly at battle.  I couldn't possible learn something from a teacher I didn't even like.  A teacher I didn't, in fact, know very well.

It's been a slow getting-to-know you process.  My body and I certainly haven't rushed into matrimony.  I still resent her some, if I'm being honest.  But I'm learning to trust her a little bit more.  That she has an intuition that is beyond my over-active mind.

I had a raging headache today.  My body's way of saying, Hey.  Hey, you there.  You whose mind thinks it's separate from me.  We need rest today.  I'm hurting.

I'm ashamed to say that I didn't honor her fully today.  I pushed beyond what I probably should have.  But perhaps the small victory here is that I heard her.  And I knew that she was talking to me.