My relationship to my body is warped. I
recall having had trouble being within my skin and flesh ever since
the first grade of school when I was 6 years old and had to go to
shower with the other girls after gym lessons. It may have begun
earlier but I have no memory of it, and I find it possible the shame
is something I have learned from my mother indirectly as a very young
child.
I have had to face my body issues in
the recent months for various reasons, the most prominent at this
moment being the role I'm working on for a play that premieres this
week. I'm playing the lead in a play that is about anorexia – I'm
acting an anorectic girl of my own age. As I have faced the
characters thought patterns, justifications and logic I have had to
face the fact that some of my own thoughts follow the same routes. I
do not have an eating disorder, but my relationship to food, my body
and exercise is at its base so tilted that had I not admitted this to
myself it may have accumulated into one. I will deal with this now
and sort myself out now to prevent causing myself any real damage.
A friend asked me a couple of weeks
back whether or not I had lost weight because of this play. I hadn't
really noticed having lost weight even though I have and I was
startled because she was so straightforward about asking the reason,
probably because of genuine concern. I told her that before I started
working on this play I kind of promised not to make myself sick over
this character. A lot of people were then asking me if I was going to
get skinnier for the role and that really annoyed me (“am I not
skinny enough as I am?”, “don't you trust me as an actor?”, “am
I not believable?”), and I responded by telling them the point of
acting is not to destroy myself. I told my friend I didn't know why I
had lost weight, but that it was probably because of simply consuming
so much energy as I was constantly busy, which probably has been the
case, and that being busy just happened to happen at the same time
with the process of the play. But even though I was telling the
truth, I knew there was something I'm leaving out: that I was excited
about losing weight.
I have fought with my body my entire
life. As a child I believed I was fat even though I was completely
normal, although not in good shape. As due to mental issues I
collapsed more and more within my body I started to actually manifest
fatness by not standing within myself, resisting exercise even more
and consequently becoming more fat – which made me more ashamed and
collapsed. I refused to look at what I could do to improve my
physical condition to be healthy, because my ideal was not in health
but in beauty, not realizing they are the same thing, and as I wanted
to just be “picture-perfect” but perceived myself to be unable to
ever reach such a high goal, I just gave up and curled up in my
self-hate. Every time I did try to do something, maybe exercise or
drink more water or diet, I set my goals so high I ended up failing
before I even got started. I did not understand my body and how it
functions, nor had I no understanding of food and nutrition.
I was at my worst during the age 12-15.
I had always loved candy and had developed some form of sugar
addiction at some point during my childhood, and when I entered
junior high and things got really rough mentally I got away with
buying candy myself and the consumption got out of hands. Sugar
became a comfort, a symbol of relaxation and a drug to get my
attention away from my problems and into some leisure activity. I
shrank within my skin deeper away, hiding within my body not wanting
to be noticed.
I became a bit more confident as my
body grew and I started to slowly turn from a child into an adult. I
got fascinated with taking pictures of my face, as I thought I looked
much more beautiful in pictures than in reality – in fact I was
molding myself to match the definition of “picture-perfect” by
creating a self-image through two-dimensional light-paintings, not
realizing that if I change my self-image I will not change myself in
the physical reality. Checking the mirror to see if I was still
“picture-perfect” became a habit I still manifest but have been
aware of and working on for some time.
There have been times when I have
rapidly lost weight without trying and suddenly matched an ideal
picture. During those times I have been immensely proud of my body,
not realizing I am living on the energy “high” and that its
polarity will come about eventually – instead of investigating
what's actually going on in my body to see whether it's healthy or
not and what I have done to cause it I have gotten “high” on the
kicks I got from finally being “more” instead of “less” in
terms of beauty and through that accepted and allowed the beauty
norms to keep on existing. When the “down” has come about I have
re-gained some or most of the weight I lost and resisted every bit of
it, again not looking at what's going on in my body but holding on to
my definition of myself as “finally beautiful”.
I am now facing a similar situation
where I have again lost weight, this time not that rapidly but
through consistent changes in my lifestyle, but I notice myself going
into panic every time my weight seems to go up even just a little. I
haven't actually weighed myself in a couple of years until a week ago
when we got a scale for the play and I noticed myself to be lighter
than ever before since childhood – I had expected that increased
muscles would keep the weight up to a certain level and I got
concerned of myself. I admit that I really don't know what's going on
in my body even though I pay close attention to it. The thing is, I
don't want to repeat the cycle: if the amount of fat in my body were
to increase, as I am now I would not accept it, I would feel bad
about it, I would blame myself, I would feel like a failure, I would
again not want to be within my body even if it were healthier that
way. I see it is not healthy to be obsessed about my body as an image
and this will change now.
-- The norm --
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to believe my self-image to be what I am, when in
fact I am this physical body that is here as it is at the moment.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to believe that myself as the self-image has to
match the beauty norm in order to be “enough” - to not be “the
loser” and compete to become “the winner”.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to believe the beauty norm unquestioned.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to consume and enjoy images in movies, magazines,
TV shows, people as idols, literature, music, video games, fashion
and art not realizing they create the beauty norm with my acceptance
and allowance.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand what the beauty
norm dictates as the smallest of details (shape and size of one's
body parts, the outlines clothing creates, colour implications, etc.)
- the reasons behind them and the consequences thereof - and how they
are promoted everywhere in the media and in people as living examples
following the norm.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not realize and admit that my struggle with my
body is the consequence of me accepting and allowing the norm to be
an authority; within this I forgive myself that I have accepted and
allowed myself to live as my self-image of “transcendence” and
thus live within and as pride and be unable to admit I too submit to
the beauty norm as an authority.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not realize the ways I still live according to
the beauty norm through my appearance as clothes, hair and body
condition.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to submit to the beauty norm as an authority, not
realizing I am abdicating my responsibility to take care of myself by
prioritizing living up to an image instead of living within and as a
healthy physical being.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not realize that limiting myself by living
according to a norm - not making choices from within the moment
within and as myself but from within the self-image I act out - will
have its consequences.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not realize that as I set myself expectations I
have to live up to, I state that I do not want to be where/who/what I
am right now, making it uncomfortable for myself to be within my
present body; I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed
myself to not realize the discomfort (= not being here) will bear its
consequences in the physical reality as my body.
-- “Loving” my body --
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to go into an energetic experience of excitement,
pride and joy as I have lost weight and perceived myself to have
“reached the goal”, not realizing the “goal” is imaginary and
moves further and further away every time I appear to have reached
it.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to believe my relationship to my body is healthy
when I have a positive energetic experience towards it, not realizing
that the fact that I experience its negative polarity as well when I
no longer match my ideal image implies that nothing I've “achieved”
is permanent and what I experience is in fact not real.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to believe my experience of pride is a state of
“loving” myself, not realizing that to experience “love” is
to experience its polarity “hate” as well, and to experience
pride is to eventually experience shame; Within this I forgive myself
that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as I
indulge in the energetic experience of pride I myself accept and
allow its polarity to eventually manifest.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to in high school believe that as I had lost
weight and “become beautiful” a “justice” had happened –
that I got what I deserved as a compensation for my long-time
suffering, within this not realizing I had not looked at what had
caused me to lose weight in the first place and that it was never a
“gift” from the world but something I caused and brought to
existence myself through my actions.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to believe and perceive myself as “successful”
when I've noticed I've lost weight, not realizing the experience of
success implies that I still live according to a certain goal and
image which I now perceive myself to be “closer” to.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not stop my experience of pride and
consequently let it accumulate into arrogance over those I perceive
to be “less” than me in terms of beauty, not realizing that this
is an act of revenge through which I continue the cycle I suffered
from by transferring the pain onto others.
Commitments:
I commit myself to study and
investigate how the human body actually works and apply what I learn
to assist and support my well-being and health as a physical being
here on Earth, as I now see, realize and understand there is a lot I
don't know about the human body and that my lack of knowledge and
understanding has caused me a lot of harm in the past.
I commit myself to allow my focus to be
on my breath instead of my mind in order to actually listen to my
body, as it knows me better than I as the mind do.
I commit myself to investigate the ways
the beauty norm is promoted and superimposed within this reality in
order to assist and support myself and others to see the norm for
what it is – a system of control and enslavement – to be able to
let go of it and be free to express myself within and as myself
instead of images.
I commit myself to no longer validate
and justify the existence of the beauty norm, as
I now see, realize and understand that it is not real as it is but a
game I no longer agree to participate in.
I commit myself to not validate
another's experience of “having to” live according to the beauty
norm and to expose it for what it is and to support and assist the
other as well as I can.
I commit myself to live as an example
by no longer accepting and allowing myself to believe the image that
is the beauty norm and live accordingly.
I commit myself to investigate and
expose all the ways I support the existence of the beauty norm through my
thoughts, words and actions.
I commit myself to live patience as my body searches for a healthy state of being within the realization that the process may be life-long and that my body might never remain the same.
I commit myself to stop "getting back at" the world through revenge by stopping my experience of pride when and as it is here, and to face who I am within and as the pride in order to forgive and correct myself.
I will continue with more specific writing on this point, such as my relationship to eating, exercising and my self-image.
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