I want to say thank you to anyone who regularly reads this site. I crossed 500 likes yesterday and am at almost 80 followers. I don’t do anything to promote this page aside from adding content, so it really means a lot to me that every single one of you found me “organically”.
Do you feel good in your body?
An honest question from a well-meaning friend.
The answer is long, and short.
I’m getting there.
Exercising makes me feel more connected, I like making her stronger, seeing what she is capable of. Her shape is changing and I do like it better, but the shape isn’t driving the why. You see my body and I, we’ve had a bad wifi connection for a very long time.
It’s hard to feel good in your body when your body doesn’t feel good. The past two years or so I’ve been fighting SIBO. I didn’t understand what she needed to feel better. I tried to give her food, started cooking my own meals, still so many times I was violently ill. I finally found the culprits. Found out what food to make, and what to avoid, to nourish my body and make it feel good.
This was me at my biggest, fighting a struggle to connect with her.
When I moved to California I found yoga. It taught me to listen to my body. Be accepting of where she’s at, understand each day can be different. I learned my body carries old pain, and trauma. Deep within my bones, under layers of muscle mass, sometimes you would find pieces, scars. This is okay, natural. Breathe it out. Cry if you need to.
During a deep meditation I found her for the first time. This small, crying, scared broken lost little girl. I picked her up and carried her out with me, told her everything was going to be okay now. No one was going to hurt her anymore. We began to heal.
During my first semester of grad school my body changed rapidly, fast. It got bigger and I didn’t understand why but I knew it was probably because of my drinking all the time. I wasn’t happy, living in the my body. My body paid the price, I poisoned it more and more each day. Year 2 I got a job at a restaurant so I would have an excuse not to get blackout drunk every weekend. I was merely trying to survive, get my degree, move on. I didn’t know then how much there was to heal from. I was struggling too much in my mind, I stopped looking at myself in mirrors.
When I was in undergrad I used my body for sex. I didn’t like it and thought it was too big, because in high school I’d been smaller. I still had a stomach, if only barely. If the attractive men “out of my league” wanted to sleep with me, I must be more attractive than I believed. Sex validated me. I’d internalized what my mother and society had instilled in me – your size and sexual attractiveness matter. Eventually when my body got bigger and my confidence low, I smelled more like desperation than sex. I thought the issue was my body, when really it was my confidence. The man I’m sleeping with now is bigger and more confident than almost any other man I’ve met. I enjoy him, and love his confidence. I wish I’d known how to have more.
When I was in high school, my body was still something that had happened to me. Cover it up! Don’t you know what those boys and men want from you! I stopped loving summer. I no longer wore shorts, they weren’t appropriate. I couldn’t wear tank tops, that was too promiscuous. I never owned a swimsuit, besides my old racing ones. My body was not my own, it belonged to the world of men.
When I was a child, my body was small and weak. It couldn’t do anything to protect me.
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When I was a child, I did gymnastics. I fell off a balance beam and got hurt, and learned that I could get up again.
In middle school, I spent hours staring at the mirror. Drawing my face, trying to learn to paint. I spent days learning every line in my hand. My drawing skills stayed buried until I had time again.
When I was in high school, I was depressed and anxious. My body and I went running, pound pound pounding down on the pavement, trying to get away. I wore my body out so my mind could finally sleep. We ran away together.
In college, I learned to take control. If men wanted me for my body, then I could objectify them too. I learned how to manipulate, play dumb, get what I want. I had a lot of fun.
In yoga I began to listen. How are you today? What are you feeling? You’re tired, body? Are you really tired, or is that depression? What do you need to feel better? I needed calm.
I learned all the different ways my body is connected. The minute I removed the anxiety, figured out the right meds, I wound up in the hospital in pain. My stomach had been in knots, survival, bad feelings in my gut, for as long as I could remember. It didn’t know how to let go. I got diagnosed with SIBO. I learned what my body loves, and hates. I learned that if I want a healthy mind, the gut neurotransmitters creates. We started moving forward. Crawling slowly. Listen to your gut, it knows when something’s wrong.
I realized my body and I had been fighting for a very, very long time. It’d gotten lost, buried underneath the other trauma and drama. I needed a different kind of mirror, today it was a pen.
In the past year my body has been healing, as one, Mind & Body. It’s getting smaller, but stronger too. My goal is not to whittle it all away. We just keep going forward, one step every day.
Do I feel good in my body? – It’s getting better every day.
I officially sent a short story of mine to TWO different science fiction magazines. They’re smaller ones that take around two weeks to reply/reject you. 🤞
Also, I’ve been working on a collection of stories around intimacy. Tonight I’ll be sharing one at the About Last Night storytelling event at The Make Out Room in San Francisco. My ‘real’ career is busier than ever, yet somehow my creative career is making strides as well.
Account For Me 