My Body, Myself Part 2
I don't feel well, possibly from lack of sleep or possibly from lack of adequate amounts of food or possibly because I'm getting sick, or possibly because I was out in the sun yesterday and the sun is not a friend of lupus, or possibly because I've played nothing but Poetry in Motion by SiR and Anderson .Paak on repeat for days and it's numbing my brain. Whatever the reason, I really don't want to write this week's newsletter. I'm going to, but just know that if it's not up to par, this is why.
In the first My Body, Myself, I was trying so hard to get to a better place with my body. I wanted to love it and I didn't know how. I wanted to be loved by it and I didn't feel that I was. I wanted other people to love it and I have never felt that anyone does. I still don't feel that anyone else does, but the thing that has changed now is that I do. I thought body neutrality was all I could hope for, but I've reached body positivity at last and it feels wonderful.
It's not an everyday thing. It's not even an every hour thing. There are still times when I'm harsh and nitpicky and self-critical, when I can't help but to focus on everything I believe is wrong with me. There's a lot still. I don't think body positivity or bodylove has to mean loving every single thing about my body. It doesn't mean my relationship with my physical self is perfect. Is anyone's? Much like self-love, it's more about acceptance of myself as a whole, as a being who feels and needs and wants and exists in the world, with all the baggage and complexity that entails. I love my body because it's not perfect, because it's gotten me to this point even with all its flaws. I'm still alive despite years of dedicated and determined neglect of myself and I think that's worthy of celebrating.
I respect my body. I'm chronically ill, I have terrible skin that fights me daily on my quest to make it softer and smoother, I'm disabled, I weigh a good bit more than I would like to and that has its own side effects. And with all of this being true, plus more, I'm still here. As the Lucille Clifton poem says, "Come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed." Often, the something trying to kill me has been me, whether directly or indirectly, and I'm so glad to have failed every time.
Going to the doctor has always been a thing that has filled me with fear. I know I'm going to get bad news about my health for one reason or another, and I'm never prepared to hear it, but I'm also never prepared to do anything about it. It's a kind of terrified apathy that I felt frozen in until very recently. This year has been huge for me. I've learned to move more, to drink more water, to take my meds regularly, and as a result, I've seen significant improvements in my lab results. Not as significant as I would like, but enough to let me know that I'm making good choices for myself. For the first time in many years, looking at my test results after last week's appointment didn't make me want to throw up or die, and in fact, there were reasons to feel proud of the work I've done.
One of the things I've had to shed in order to get here is relying on other people's appreciation to validate that my body is good. I still want to be seen as attractive because I'm human and I live in the world, and I still want people to express their attraction to me if we've established that kind of dynamic, but I can't rely on it to make me feel valuable. It doesn't last, and it's not a form of validation I can believe. Words are only words. Anyone can say them and I have no way of knowing if they mean them or not.
And, more to the point, bodies have value regardless of their attractiveness. My body, specifically, has value regardless of its attractiveness. It's nice to be held and touched, and to hold and touch, and that can be a way to love your body, but it can't be the only way. For me, it can't even be the primary way, because it's so fleeting, so difficult to keep. My relationship with intimacy is so fraught that what comes easily one day might not the next. What makes me feel good one day might make me recoil the next. I have to find other ways and reasons to show kindness to my physical self.
And still, this is something I'm coming to value in a way I never could before, something I finally feel able to say I want without shame. My therapist has told me many times over the past few months that the one person I've felt genuine, unforced attraction toward isn't the only person I'm ever going to experience it with, and I've dismissed it every time because it doesn't feel true. It's never happened before, so why should I assume it could happen again with someone else? He says I've done the work and come such a long way. He says I should give myself more credit. He says it's me, the fact that I'm learning and growing and changing, not this specific person. Maybe he's right. He usually is. I'm still skeptical, but I'm teaching myself, day by day, a more compassionate, confident, gentle way to interact with my body, and that has to lead to better and healthier outcomes, right? If my body and I are friends, surely it will be good to me as I'm learning to be good to it.
On dating apps, when people tell me how beautiful I am, my automatic response is still to roll my eyes. Some of this is because it's usually an opening message and if that's the best you can come up with, given all the material I've provided, you're probably not my kind of person, but some of it is my inability to conceive of myself as physically appealing. Clearly they're lying to me, I think. Clearly they have an agenda. And they probably do. But it makes me sad that I can't even entertain the possibility that they believe what they're saying to me, because there's simply no world where it's true.
It's complicated. There's work left to do and I'm sure there always will be, but the bright side is that I no longer hate and resent it, and I no longer hate and resent myself. I'm tethered to my body, rooted in my own skin in a way I couldn't have hoped for until this year. I am not the things that have been done to me and I don't have to carry echoes of unwanted touch or ungenerous words. Accepting my body, loving my body, caring for my body as it exists in this moment is an act of defiance, a way of taking myself back and saying that I am wanted, if not by anyone else, then at least by myself. A way of saying that I'm enough, that I'm worth trying for. And I am, and I am, and I am.
I almost never include photos in these newsletters, because I don't often take them and because I want the focus to be the words. Everything is too centered around visuals and aesthetics and as someone who is blind, it gets tedious. But for this one, it feels appropriate to show you a time and a look where I felt like my best and prettiest self. Sometimes it's less about loving my body itself and more about loving the way it fits into a specific dress, the way it feels to wear that dress and go out into the world, to let myself be seen. A little vanity is okay after years of trying to hide and insisting that I didn't want anyone to pay attention to my body. If people are going to look at me regardless, and if I'm not going to know when or how they're looking, I can at least have some control over what they're seeing and I can make sure it's something I feel good about. I deserve to feel good and I did in this.
