Am I Finally At Peace With My Body?
Why I’m Trying To End A Lifelong War
I feel like I have always been at odds with this flesh covered vehicle of transport I call my body.
I think the only time we’ve been on the same side is when we were trying to push out babies.
I remember how I viewed this casing of skin as a child. It never felt like it fitted me right. It always felt too big. I can clearly recall being about eight years old and noticing the thin arms of a boy sat close to me in the classroom. They were like little matchsticks, and when I looked back at mine they seemed too big in comparison. I couldn’t understand why. They were just too fleshy…just too much.
When I was about ten my body began to develop. I had womanly curves whilst still playing with Lego. I hated it. And I hated all the friendly euphemisms for being a big child as well. ‘You’re a big girl, aren’t you?’ ‘It’s just puppy fat.’ Ugh. I didn’t really want to be a fat puppy, funnily enough.
As I grew I became increasingly aware of my unwanted flesh. I had breasts that jiggled and moved. I had hips and a bum. I had rolls of fat when I bent over or squished up. None of it felt like it belonged to me. It all felt like it needed to be shredded.
The weird thing is, if I look back at old photos of me, I really wasn’t as big as I thought I was at the time. I had a brother and two sisters who were all like stick insects, and I was bigger than them and looked big for my age, but I wasn’t really fat. I was just developing. Still, it was not the body I wanted or felt I should have, and that feeling has never really gone away.
As a teenager my weight went up and down, and more often than not, I simply loathed the human suit I was forced to wear. I wanted to unzip it and step out, revealing the true me. I would have long, thin, shapely legs. Matchstick arms. A flat, hard belly. A neat, trim waist. Angles on my face. I would shed my skin and emerge looking like the girls I saw on TV and in magazines.
At one point in my teenage years, I submitted to my body and gave in. I hated sports because I felt so fat and slow, so I avoided them like the plague, shut myself away in the imaginary worlds of books and writing, and hence got bigger. I thought I was stuck with this flabby cage forever. I did not want people to see me. I often wished I could cease to exist.
During my later years as a teenager, a full on battle commenced. I went to war with my body. I fought back. I kicked its arse and got control of it. I aimed to change it and remould it, to make it into something I could be proud of. It all started off sensibly enough, but as you can imagine, it soon all got rather messy.
I figured out ways of fighting back and rebelling. I discovered ways I could eat without getting fat. I worked out how easy it was to just not eat at all. I realised that I could run and that once I started, it was hard to stop. So I ran faster and faster and faster, doing all I could to outrun the fat girl, to leave that chubby loser far behind.
During my early twenties, this battle continued. It’s fair to say I treated my body badly. I hated it and felt like it hated me. We would never be friends. I would punish it any chance I got. Away from parental control, my University days were not good for me at all. I became obsessed with feeling hungry. With feeling for ribs and hip bones, with feeling the enthralling darkness of pleasure and fear. At my thinnest, I got more compliments than ever. I got noticed by boys, flirted with, asked out. Things that had never happened when I was bigger. I loved it when people told me how much weight I had lost. I went to a family wedding and people did not recognise me. The only thing that ever scared me into eating was each time my periods stopped…and only because I was desperate to be a mother.
I’ve always said having children saved me from myself, and it’s true. The first pregnancy we had ended in a miscarriage and I was devastated and completely blamed myself. I’d still been exercising, still watching what I ate, still waging war with my flesh.
The second pregnancy was a success and in the years that followed I threw myself into being the best mother I could be, and although I worked hard to get my body back, it didn’t occupy my mind in quite the same way as it had. There just wasn’t time. Through pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding I did, at last, learn to feel pride in my body. It wasn’t just a clumsy machine to be hated and abused, it was actually quite amazing. It could grow a baby. It could feed and sustain and nurture a life. Although I am far from happy with my body today, I do feel an element of pride in the wobbly bits and stretch marks. They are part of who I am and what I have chosen to do with my life.
I’ve struggled over the years not to return to the old, messed up me. I was lucky enough to receive therapy before I became a mother, and I truly believe that opportunity set me on the correct path of health and fitness and sensible attitudes.
The thing is, you can’t hurt yourself when you have children because you realise that if you did, you would also be hurting them.
And now here we are. Me and my body which is now in its fourth decade and still feels to me like it’s not really mine. I can’t say that we’re friends yet, but we’re not enemies anymore either.
These days I am more concerned with what my body can do and less with what it looks like. Can it give me a full morning in the garden, tending my beloved vegetable patch, or will I wake up with a bad back tomorrow? Can it keep me on my feet during one of my busy after-school writing clubs? Can these legs walk as far as my dogs love to? When I wake up, will I feel aches and pains or will it all run smoothly? Will the morning headache go away or get worse?
Because now I realise this body is ageing.
I never really believed that would happen to me. Somehow, I felt like growing old was for other people.
But here I am, suddenly appreciating this skeleton covered in flesh far more than ever. Because at the moment, it works. It does everything I want it to. It doesn’t let me down. So far, it’s still in good working order.
These days, I look in the mirror and give myself a wry smile. I give a little nod, maybe even tip a wink. I tell myself I am doing okay for a woman in her forties with four children. I tell myself that perhaps it’s time to lay down my weapons and end this war for good.
