Howling Into the Void
So I cannot remember a time when I have loved, let alone enjoyed my body. Like, I can remember times when I didn’t hate my body and want to punish it as much as I do but I really can’t remember a time when I haven’t felt like a decent and somewhat sparkly consciousness being hauled around in a dented, broken, dirty wagon missing a wheel. Loving this body is going to be difficult.
My mom tells me that I was born premature. I was jaundiced and had to be kept in the hospital under the baby gro-lights. My grandmother told me that my mom always gave me awful food, like feeding me fries when I was little. I can’t remember either of those things and I also cannot remember a time when I have not been fat.
When I was very little I wasn’t aware of it as often. Other kids would tease me sometimes. Teachers and other adults would make “that face”.
Apparently my grandmother was very concerned about me. She took nutrition courses when she was young and she was always telling my dad and uncle to eat a banana. Her sons were both active and athletic. My grandfather became diabetic, got really sick and died when my dad was still in high school. His doctors were constantly telling my grandmother that he was a closet alcoholic and he was ruining his liver with drink. My grandfather didn’t drink except socially. He’d lied to enlist in the navy to get away from a drunk father who beat the shit out of him. I think the history of stress and abuse and growing up during the Great Depression probably had a lot to do with the course of his illness. But my grandmother was convinced that poor nutrition was going to kill me.
When I was little she would send me books, which I loved. I stumbled a little when learning to read (dyslexia? Something in my brain is not right and I wrote mirror-wise) but by the second grade I could consistently read 2 to 4 grade-levels above my own. She would also send me exercise equipment and kids diet recipe books. I am very flexible and seemed to enjoy tumbling tots so she got me a set of “bangles” that were baby arm weights with Mary Lou Retton on the packaging. She paid for a tennis racket when I was older. No one ever showed me how to use those things. I was an only kid who spent most of my time home alone and was not to make noise or mess. I am profoundly uncoordinated (can’t keep left and right straight, discalculia?) and had no one to play with when I could go outside (home alone = stay inside with the doors locked).
When I was eight or so, my mom tried to have my very indifferent babysitter use weight-watchers to portion out my food during the summer while I was home alone most of the day. My mom tried to get me to watch Richard Simmons (creepy!) and sweat to songs I didn’t know by doing aerobics that I would get confused about the choreography to and freeze up.
As I got older I understood better why my body was so unacceptable. But no one ever bothered to show me how to be active. My parents wouldn’t be home to take me to sports. I couldn’t go outside when I was home alone and when my father was home just letting a cabinet door fall closed rather than holding it and cushioning it until it closed was “slamming things!”. I could ride my bike alone when someone was home. Or jump rope alone. Or play with the tether-tennis thing alone.
And eating... I knew eating too much was bad because it made me fat. Except my mother was fat and she didn’t eat breakfast or lunch and she drank Diet Coke like water. Dinner was served when mom got home which meant I was famished. Not cleaning my plate was ok until it happened in front of my maternal grandfather. Then I traumatized him by not cleaning my plate because he had been a POW in North Africa and he had been tortured with starvation so food waste was personal to him. He constantly badgered his wife and five daughters about their weight because it made them unattractive.
I listened to my aunts talk about diet tips and exercises to target problem areas. When I seemed interested in exercises they told me what I was just fat and needed to exercise more, these exercises were for adults (who I guess were thin except for these very specific places?).
My father is disabled because of a nerve injury. When I was a kid he would do things like water ski and jetski. He would be an idiot with his friends (I was too little and afraid of loud noises and mom was always working) and do handstands on his jetski or play bumper cars with inner-tubes. He would also get frustrated with things and throw them or kick them. He would hurt himself either in a snit or at play and not see a doctor and not give himself time to heal.
I cannot think of an adult in my life who had any peace with their body. My mother and father HATE their bodies. My relatives hated my body. I have a fat body. Its not always healthy. I don’t always make virtuous choices and I don’t always know what the virtuous choice is. People assume that because I am fat, I feel certain things and behave certain ways. They are often wrong. The food I eat is critiqued and seen as a statement about me as a person, my intentions and my worthiness as a human being. I’m just trying to learn to view eating as something more than just putting food in my body until I’m not hungry anymore.
I don’t know if I can love my body. I often find that I want to punish it for being so bad.