Body Loathing

I'm a firm believer that body shaming of any kind is ridiculous. People look how they look and that's okay! I won't even add on a caveat about how "as long as they're healthy" it's fine, because honestly, the state of another person's body is none of my damn business, whether they are healthy or not, hot or not, fat or boney.

Everyone's body is a miraculous and incredibly complex and beautiful and immaculate husk. That's right. It's just a shell, just a meat suit for the soul. It's your soul that I care about.

When it comes to my own body though, I go through periods of utter loathing. Years ago, that feeling was generated by traumas I had endured. My body was simply an instrument that other humans had used to hurt me. It was also a flawed machine that couldn't accomplish the physical tasks that I wanted due to my clubbed feet and subsequent issues. 

Now that I've grown up and let those things go (mostly), I loathe my body for other reasons. I see it mostly as just getting older and decaying and getting less and less pleasant for me to look at. I don't feel confident when I undress, and my wardrobe has slowly transitioned to all flowy forgiving clothing that a middle aged woman would wear.

I hate how my body aches and how tired it is all the time, and how I got an asthma attack from climbing my stairs the other day. I hate how this body gets migraines too often, and how every single bruise shows up in stark relief. I don't like how I'm constantly having to monitor and care for this body just to slow down the inevitable slide into being overweight.

Shouldn't there be a time in life when you don't have to be so scrupulous and instead just enjoy having a body to do things like smell the air or hear music or taste champagne?




These days the times I take pleasure in my body are few and far between. It always feels like a weight holding me back instead of a vehicle to let me experience the good things in life.



I've written two pretty dark posts tonight. I guess I had to let it out. I want to leave in a better mood than when I started, so here's a picture of me from last fall, where my body felt joy and exhilaration (I'm afraid of heights) instead of merely feeling how bulbous I was in that harness. 

It was an important day because I did something courageous. The thrill of victory is a feeling that my body was made for. I need to seek it more often.