My Body Story

This is not a new story. Every woman has their own variation of it. Some are more heartbreaking than others. 
Here's mine: 






I was a skinny kid but once hormones hit, I gained weight. Not a lot of weight, but enough so that there was most definitely meat on my bones.

I remember my stepfather sitting me down and telling me that being big was going to cause me problems down the road. Specifically in the bedroom. Looking back, that wasn't appropriate but I didn't know that. 

My mother would ask me how much I weighed and I was a few pounds below her. She would look at me in awe. Then she would pat my arm and tell me that I looked "healthy", but I don't think she meant it. 

Fat ass. I remember the day I was called that. And it wasn't by someone from school. It was within the walls of my home. 

There's more but I'm not going to list them all. Thinking about it makes me cringe. 

I think it's my fault to have allowed the gradual erosion of my self esteem. I didn't know any better. My weight was my value. That's what I was led to believe. And I look back on those pics of me, and I see skinny me and I feel stupid for thinking that way. 

At 29, I thought I had overcome all that body image crap. I thought I was good with what I saw in the mirror. I stopped equating my goodness as a person with weight. I could look at my body naked for a full 2 minutes and not say something bad about it. 

And then I went to the Philippines. 

"You look like a Tonka Truck"  "You have a pretty face, but you're fat."  "Oh no! what happened? You need to lose weight." "You're fat."  "Wow, you're big."  "Hahaha, you ballooned into a house."

This was all said on day 1. 

Yeah. That sucked. Also, I hadn't met this people before. They said these sentences within the first ten seconds of meeting me. It was a jarring because you don't normally have your defenses up when you meet people for the first time. I wasn't prepared for it. 

I was there for two weeks and it was a test of endurance that I failed. By the end of it, I looked in the mirror and hated what I saw. I hated my body. I was a fat lard. I didn't deserve happiness until I fixed my body. I looked like a fool when I tried to be fashionable. Why try at all? Just crawl into a hole and die. No one will miss you. 

Yeah, real healthy mind-set. What a souvenir. Thanks, Manila. 

It's been 3 years. I've shaken most of it off but some of it still lingers.

I'm nervous because I am going to see family this June. They're Filipino. It's really common in Filipino culture to be that blunt about each other's weight (apparently). Already, I've been given advice by them online on how I need to lose weight. As if this was a problem I was not aware of. 

But this past week, I've come to an epiphany. 

I really like my body. It will never be perfect. But I can walk and it can move the way I need it to.  

I was bedridden most of last year.I was reunited with helplessness. It was awful. I couldn't get up from the bed without having to use a cane to limp to the bathroom to pee. 

Now, after months of structural therapy, I can stand again without pain. I'm doing yoga every morning now. I can't do a lot of it but I am noticing a change in my back pain. I walk in the afternoon. I do 100 squats a day. The pain is lessening and my body is getting stronger. 

Oh, there is still pain, that's not going away, ever (even after surgeries trying to fix that). But I can walk a mile before I feel it. Those are the good days. I won't even go into the bad days.    

But the scale hasn't moved. Not one inch. Nada. 

(And yes, I do all that I'm supposed to in regards to diet. Lots of veggies. Light on carbs and starches. No added sugary to coffee or tea. Lots of water. Etc. Etc. Etc.)

I'm forced to face the fact that this might be it. That this body of mine, though getting stronger and healthier every day, might not ever be "normal." I may never drop the forty pounds I'm supposed to drop to be given permission to love it as it is. But then...why should I hate it as it is now?

It's pretty amazing how I've let myself be duped by this whole scam. There are people out there who think they've been hired to name who is beautiful and who is not. They're unpaid, working for free, and on the clock 24/7. And mine happen to be my relatives. 

I've been on this path to self-fulfillment. It's gonna be a life long journey, I know that. But a lot of things are coming to light. I try to live by what I've discovered.

1.) "Comparison is the thief of joy." I repeat this quote a lot. 2 years ago, it was practically a daily mantra. It makes me happy.  

2.) My body is a vessel that I should stop hating. It's amazing that I can get out of bed these days and not have to use a cane to walk. 

3.) People's opinions about my body are not things I should be bothered by. How dare they say anything bad about it? It's amazing. It's a survivor. I can't even tell you the months of pain it went through.   

4.) I'm going to stop the negative self talk. I'm done. It's not doing a bit of good. I just feel awful. And I'm done being my own bully to this body of mine. I'm just going to love my curves. Love my belly pooch. Love my ass. Love my thighs. Love my french fry toes. Love my thinning curly hair. Just love it all. It's mine. Why shouldn't I ? 

5.) This endless pursuit that woman are forced to endure for a "perfect body" is a way to control them. Think about it. So much attention and time is paid to this shit. I could be doing so many other things. Hell, some kind of revolution. Something that would change the world. People pointing at each other's bodies is not going to change the world. It's this awful cycle that makes you clueless to what really matters. 

Future plan: 

I'm going to continue eating lots of veggies, drinking lots of water, doing my yoga in the morning and my afternoon walk at night, my 100 squats, my 7 hours of sleep at night. But I'm also going to start thanking my body for being able to stand without pain. For walking without limping. For staying by me and not leaving me when I saw it as a hindrance. 

Wouldn't that be crazy? If your body like just left you one day and you ended up with an entirely different body that wasn't your own? But it might not be the body you wanted? It could be like the body of an 80 year old lady? And like, she gets your body b/c she would treat it nicer?  STORY IDEA. 

Okay, I'm done.