I’m listening to the playlist I usually run to, it starts out with Ramble On by Led Zeppelin, next is Roll With the Changes by REO Speedwagon, then Drink Water by Jon Batiste. But I’m not running this morning, I’m writing instead- trying to share my attention with writing. When I get hyperfocused on needing to go run it can be a sign I’m getting distant from my body.
Back at my yearly physical in February the PA had me step on the scale and I was unhappy with the number- 178.
That number: 178. It didn’t make me feel too big, it made me feel like I was back in the body I was in when I was drinking heavily in my early 30’s. It was like a time machine, transporting me back to the days of working 14 hour doubles waiting tables in Charleston, SC- I can picture myself, bloated and hungover almost every day, pretending I was fine. An out of control person pretending to be fine.
178 made me feel like I was out of control again. Like I was pretending I was fine.
My body and I, our relationship has been…well. I can remember being happy with how sturdy I was when I was five years old- I would run as fast as I could, feeling like I was flying. I had the freedom in my body to roller skate in circles, backwards, believing it was beautiful. That I was beautiful.
Before I learned I wasn’t.
Before I understood that strong and stocky was not pretty. As soon as I understood that, around age six, I cut my long hair into a Dorothy Hamill cut, I started a lifelong argument with clothes, I began looking at my body with disgust, disdain. I lost my physical freedom. My body and I parted ways, I made us enemies.
If my body were a person, it would have been so confused at how quickly I started hating it. How it went from being my best friend to the worst. I moved out, left without any explanation, accusing it of betraying me, letting me down by being itself. How could you? I would rant, furious. What did I do? my body would ask, heartbroken. You know what you did. I would say, glaring. Hating.
As a teenager I wanted to be 5’7”, willowy. I decided that was what would solve all my problems- being tall and thin. That got all my focus. But not a lot of effort. I spent so much time in an argument with reality, in so many ways. I drank at my body. I made rules for it. I sabotaged it, then blamed it. I made it an it, not a who. Not me.
I remember reading the line Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body by James Joyce and recognizing myself. I took my body and put it over there, punished in the corner until it showed up tall and thin, which is not who it is. I created mountains of instructions and restrictions without ever talking to my body itself. Without seeing it, hearing it, or feeling it.
And my body just kept showing up. No matter if I pummeled it with alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, no sleep, no food, too much food, shame. It carried two pregnancies, my beautiful children. Ran thousands of miles. Lived through thousands of hangovers. Through a skin cancer scare, a thyroid cancer scare, a full hip replacement, two hernia surgeries, a c-section. Showed up.
After I quit drinking, I could have approached my body. Apologized. I wanted to. But I didn’t know what to say. I was ashamed and embarrassed. I cut off the part of me that is physically me. So instead of showing up for my body, I pretended it hadn’t happened.
I leaned hard into my intellect, into learning. Into healing my thoughts. I pretended my body and I were friends again, even though I stopped being able to cry. I got smarter and number. I could feel the lack of trust. I upped my sense of control, that looked like shaming my body more, frantically changing clothes over and over every time I got dressed, silently accusatory, impossible to satisfy. I believed that things would be fine if my body were just…different. Blaming my body as if it were not a part of me, shaped by me, as if it wasn’t me.
And so for years I kept pretending. Pretending that my body had nothing important to say. That it didn’t know what it was talking about. That my voice was the only voice that mattered. I put my fingers in my ears and stayed separate. Faking it. Life from the neck up.
Then I had a full right hip replacement two years ago. My right hip was bone on bone with bursts of bone spurs shooting out. I imagine this is where my body put all the pain, anger, isolation, and resentment it felt from being exiled and abused. I imagine the cancer scares as my body hinting at the power it has. I imagine the feeling that I can’t ever quite relax as my body letting me know until we learn to cooperate things will always feel this way. That I can try, but I can’t ignore it forever. That “it” is not an “it” at all.
The hip replacement has slowly changed my relationship with my body. I have a long scar to remind me of what my body can do. I imagine my body, anesthetized, going through a hip replacement, everything that entails. And my body lived. Healed beautifully. Showed up, again.
It feels ridiculous sometimes, me finally showing up and trying to build trust and be friends with my body again. I would not want to be friends with me after the way I’ve treated it.
The way I’ve treated myself.
I think I separated from my body because it was too hard to stay with all the information and I needed a big part of me to blame. I pushed my body away because it was easier than accepting what I saw as defeat. I suffered because I deemed my very being a failure. I had to separate from my body to be able to be in the world, because I was humiliated by the thing I could not hide- my body. So instead I hid from my body.
But you know what? My body is here. Showing up, like usual. Without blame, or much resentment. I get it, my body voice seems to say, in what I’m starting to understand as body language.
I’ve started practicing listening to my body language when I’m out running, letting my body do the running instead of my thoughts. It’s where trust is being built between us, where I know I have to surrender to strengthen our bond. It goes something like this:
We should stop and walk now my thoughts decide. This used to turn into a debate: Should I? Shouldn’t I? What should I do? Now I know who to ask- my body. I check in with my feet, my legs, my lungs. All good. So I keep running. No debate.
Here’s another piece of trust:
I carry a handheld water bottle with me when I run. In the past, I would take a swig, then hold it in my mouth, not trusting myself to not choke, then I would try to take small swallows while holding my breath at the same time. Sometimes I would have to spit it out because I needed to breathe, or I would gulp and it would hurt.
One day not too long ago, on a hot morning run, I took a swig, and just swallowed it in one motion. Smooth. My body knew what to do. See? my body seemed to say. Let me do what I know how to do. I’ve got you.