I only body-shame myself

Photo by Justyn Warner on Unsplash

I don't see your fat as offensive. More power to you. Mine is disgusting though. I think you should get the plastic surgery you've been saving up for. I don't want your aesthetic. Your body is your own. I prefer you do with it what you want. 

But I sometimes want to peel my skin off, fold it up, throw it in the trash and be done.

I have a complex relationship with my body. Like everyone I've ever known, I have doubts about it. How does it look? Will it break? Is it doing that on purpose?

I stopped writing this for an hour to read articles on fasting to lose weight. They answered a few of my questions, but not the most important. 

Will this weight loss method perform the only "miracle" I need? Can I fast my way to invisible? I bet I could. 

Last week, to further fuck up things, I vowed to be in 'stripper shape' by the next calendar year. I have no clue what that means, and I'm mostly ignorant about what it takes. The last time I had a six-pack it's because I wasn't eating food, and starvation can be pretty sexy when you let it ride out. 

I hated myself for not making any money, but I loved how I looked. My brain wasn't all the way right, but it sat there in my body, pleased.

My body has worked for me more than it hasn't. I know one day that pattern will reverse all the way. 

There are two photos of myself that I love most. 

In one, I can see in 16-year-old me, pride in having shoulders. My chest wasn't flat, like when I was younger, but burly. The beginning of stocky.

And then in another flick, I'm newly 30 and living in a two bedroom flophouse in South Carolina. It was a lonely house and I was lonely so I worked out a lot. When I didn't have anything to do, I worked out. I often had nothing active to do without people around. The bathroom in the house was from the 1980s and so it had an old, streaky mirror. I had to work hard to see the cuts in my muscles and the tone in that mirror, so that's what I did.

The flophouse photo is like me as an action figure, with the deep V-cut down my pelvis. Pointing to my biggest source of pride and insecurity like 'help.' 

I fight an internal anger at myself with exercise. It's not about maintenance. I say it's about maintenance, but I exercise usually to get out of seeing a body that upsets me. When I "look fat." As if parts are melting off. 

Gym photos, gym progress, doing the pull-up and the push-up engage and battle gravity. Each day, gravity pulls me apart, and then further into earth. The body teams up with gravity and other forces of death that we measure by scale. 

My body will fail me. That truth I count on.

Today, I'm searching my flesh for signs of disloyalty and find two traitors. Gray nose hairs. 

At 21, I went vegan to lose weight (the first six-pack) and lost mass so fast, a traitor infiltrated. Stretch mark, lower belly: welcome to the ranks. Your havoc will kill what I thought I was, and some smoothness I felt I deserved. 

Body didn't slide into first. Body has not been punched square in the face. Body has passed out but not been knocked out. Body will not dunk, despite the fact that, at 24, body grabbed rim. Fingertip scraped a metal rim holding the key to what I am not. I was not holding the ball. 

They say the key to maturity is knowing your limits; knowing what you don't know or what you can't do. That's never more real than with my body.

I remember when I could hoop all day, sweat through a shirt, dry it out sitting on the park benches, and then hoop again until the flood lights came on. At the moment, I can hoop for an hour straight, and half I spend "warming up," feeling for signs of betrayal as I leap and land. Jumps inspire drama now. A two-act play, that could end tragically or comically.

I want to accept my body without looking at the bodies of others. I want to be the cover of My Health magazine with subtitles:

1. All The "Love" In Your Love Handles
2. Shirts-On Poolside: Embrace The Style
3. Stretch Marks The Spot: Let Your Skin Hang!

Ideally, I could do that and not look at myself like a "Before" picture. Like my body doesn't need any progress. Like it's okay exactly how it is. But that requires courage I lack. I see my body as a failed promise, a piece of my unmet potential. In my mind, I was in the NBA. I did CrossFit. I became a Ninja Warrior. I'm a marathon runner, or at least half-marathon runner. 

Since none of these things happened, I know my body is a damn lie. At different points, we argue about what's the least we could do and still be happy. We've settled on not eating so late. Body is ok with that because of indigestion and the way that bloating looks in the morning. We can both do without. 

I negotiate with shame, anger and frustration this way. To a stalemate. I scroll through Instagram posts of people hashtagging their bodies into acceptance. I see fat, in-progress, and chiseled people making their minds into their bodies' allies.

On the toilet, I double-tap these photos until I feel like that could be me. Fit-spo'ing. 

Still, cycling through the diets, the theories, and the fitness classes fuels that shame. These repeated acts of resistance when I want to not care so much about my body are deceptive. They're soothing but temporary. I could do a thousand reps and it wouldn't materially change what I thought of myself. 

My new plan involves eating chicken sandwiches, sinking shame into the layers between the bread, and not looking in mirrors until I'm at the gym again.

Although I appreciate any suggestions, right now I want to focus on staying shameful and vain. 

Thank you for your encouragement and positivity. But for the record, I only body-shame myself.