Days 80-84: Fear of being disabled

10-14122012

When I was a child I was physically in poor shape. It was the result of the accumulation of a many things: anxiety leading to eating more, using sugar as escapism, negative experiences during school gym classes. To put it simply, I ate too much and exercised too little, and all the more sloppy my body became the more I was ashamed of myself and alienated myself from my body as I wanted to escape it, not standing within myself and thus causing my whole physical being to collapse.

All the while I was in poor shape, which has been most of my life, I have wanted to be something else but didn't know how to get there. Whenever I tried out some new diet or form of exercise I gave up soon after, because the results weren't instant – this indicating that my starting point was still to escape myself, to get a quick magic fix to what I had become, and that I was rejecting myself instead of actually facing myself and seeing what actually needs to be done to make my physical healthy again. I tried to force the change from the outside when I needed to first change from within.

-- Exercise --

I hated exercise for a long time and even stated that “sports are evil” - mainly because of the shame and mocking I faced during school gymnastics, but also because I saw the whole concept of competing to be empty. Even if there were tiny sparks of simply enjoying the movement they were quickly suppressed because of self-judgement (perceiving others to judge me) as I compared myself to the other kids in my class. I wasn't one who would be defined a “sports person” - I had no background in sport, only in dancing and roaming outdoors – whereas other girls did and thus they were preferred by teachers as well as other students.

I realize that I was probably a very difficult student for the gym teachers; I remember noticing this during junior high when we had a really nice teacher who tried to give everyone a chance. As my attitude was already rotten I was refusing everything that was offered, except dancing lessons and orienteering. It must be quite the task to teach and inspire for the gym teachers who recognize this problem with the system where others are brought down and a selected few glorified – because year after year a new load of suppressed and collapsed kids are rolling in, and the teachers have to try and treat the symptoms when the problem itself hasn't been prevented in the first place.

In high school I started to go out and enjoy nature again. I took walks, but that's pretty much all the exercise I had besides theatre and dancing. Even theatre wasn't always that much of an exercise, depending on what kind of a play we were working on. So I still exercised very little.

It was sometime around my early twenties (19-21) when I started to go out into nature to climb. I still wouldn't make it anything more than walking, but I was starting to get a hunch of the enjoyment there is to be found in exercise. The problem was, no matter how much I moved I remained in a poor physical state. The reason to this was finally revealed about a year ago when a blood test showed I had been anemic for a long time, possibly years. Around the same time I received medical assistance for that, we started working on a play that was physically very demanding, and in addition to the rehearsals I started jogging, did more climbing and learned to jump. (Lol, sounds simple, but it was the next step for me.) And so I exercised more and more as I enjoyed it a lot, because for the first time in a long time my body was no longer anemic and didn't try to kill me every time I ran, and surprise surprise – my physical condition improved, I lost fat, gained muscles, my posture straightened – overall I felt healthier than ever and rediscovered the joy of moving. To me this was exhilarating.

So now to go through my relationship to exercise – I now see that ever since I started to go to school my view on exercise changed from being a natural form of action and movement (from not having an “opinion” towards exercise, as it simply existed, into having an “opinion”) into something that I was really uncomfortable with because of how I compared myself to others. I then created an impenetrable personality towards exercise, through which I treated “sports people” with disdain and bad-mouthed all sports, turning my fear into aggression. I generalized all exercise to be a part of this “sports phenomenon” that I created in my mind – generalizing it all together into one “enemy”, one object, made it easier to refuse all of it and thus escape my fear of not being as good as everyone else – fear of being the last – fear of being the worst. I then defined myself to be “bad at sports” - in other words, physically unable – and I have been living within and as this self-definition and self-limitation for most of my life.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to escape myself by not accepting my physical state as it is at any given moment as that which my body is at that moment, rejecting myself through shame as I did not want to admit to myself and face myself as what I had accepted and allowed myself to become.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to abuse myself by making the choice to not face myself over and over again, thus continuing the cycle and causing the state of my physical health to deteriorate accordingly.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize the reason I am stuck with an unhealthy body is because I have not faced and admitted it is of my doing and my responsibility, and that I could change it all by simply stopping it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, instead of facing and admitting the state of my physical body and my responsibility over it, to abdicate my responsibility to carry myself and deal with the consequences of my own accepted and allowed patterns and habits; to not seek for actual solutions because I did not understand and did not want to understand the problem; and to thus look for a quick fix that would transform my self-image into a positive one; and to believe that changing myself externally would be enough to transform me into the ideal I wanted to be – not realizing that change does not occur by living within and as pictures, as pictures are two-dimensional and thus aren't of this physical moving world of 3D – pictures do not move, and movement is required for change, as all change is purely movement.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to live as less than who I am by believing I am “less than” the image I perceived I was “supposed” to be and by thus not carrying myself and then allowing my physical being to collapse, freeze, get stuck, shut down, turn inwards and become immobile.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself according to my childhood memories of gym lessons.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself according to my childhood memories of bullying.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to look at what others did during gym lessons and define it as something that requires “skill”, and then when I tried to do it myself feel disappointed when I failed and then define myself as “less skillful” and the others “more skillful” - or rather them “having skill” and me “lacking skill” - not realizing that the reason I failed may have been the fact that as I looked at what another did through a feeling/emotion I created an image of it in my mind, and thus when I attempted the movement myself I tried to repeat the image instead of figuring out how the movement should actually feel like in my body.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold onto this definition of myself as “less skillful” in sports, because I picked up “signs” (how I perceived others to behave / how others treated to me) that validated my self-definition on every gym lesson throughout my school years.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold on to the definition of myself as “less skillful” in sports, because I perceived that if I cannot beat another playing by their “rules” (participating in sports) I can beat them playing by mine (the opposite of sports) – reacting to “being bad” at sports with fear and defending myself by saying “I didn't want to play anyway, keep your stupid sports” - thus rejecting all sports by believing that I somehow “won” this way.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold on to the definition of myself as “less skillful” in sports, because from within that personality in my environment as friends I could bad-mouth sports all I wanted and be accepted/praised/validated for it, never having to face myself and question my spiteful behavior.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe the fact that another person does something skillful is somehow targeted at me as an insult, taking the simple existence and self-expression of another personally.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe my interpretations of teachers' and students' behavior as body language, facial expressions, language and tone to be real, not realizing I am interpreting them through my already-existing self-definition which I seek validation to.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, as I believed my interpretations of the behavior of others, to believe I “knew” what all “sports people” were like, generalizing them into one stereotype, not realizing every single living being is individual and that to generalize people is to guess around in a really big scale.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe all “sports people” (people who were relatively good at sports and did sports during their free time) to be obnoxious, pretentious and arrogant – not realizing that I have formed my perception/opinion/definition of them based on fear as I found them “superior” and wasn't willing to confront them and so avoided them by deeming them “distant”, not realizing I was making myself distant, and that according to my memories these people were actually mostly very humble, kind and down-to-earth.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see another do something I have defined as “skillful” and then judge myself to “not be enough” to do it myself, then projecting my self-judgement onto others and through interpretation believing that my surroundings were judging me as “not skillful” when in fact I judged myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, after some attempt at a physical movement, to interpret my gym teacher's facial expression to be judgmental and disappointed, then believing my teacher was judging and defining me as “not good enough”, not realizing I was judging and defining myself by interpreting that which I saw around me through fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a “sports hater” personality as I have reacted with fear towards “sports people”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe all exercise is evil because I associated exercise with school and drew up past emotional reactions whenever exercise was discussed, not realizing I am allowing my past reactions and experiences dictate my actions in the present and thus am not really living HERE within and as myself within breath in every moment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to refuse most forms of exercise (such as ball games) simply because I associated them with past experiences in school and didn't realize I am able to let go of all of the connotations and memories I have added upon an activity.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize exercise is enjoyable simply because it is movement.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to limit myself from enjoying exercise as movement as I have believed it is not enjoyable.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not enjoy exercise because it didn't give me instant gratification, not realizing it's not about the result but the moment of movement right HERE.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not enjoy exercise because I believed the memories, images, emotions, feelings, expectations, interpretations and such mind phenomenon I had related to exercise to be an inseparable part of exercise, not realizing they are unnecessary extra I have painted upon the actual reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make exercise unenjoyable by resisting every movement I made and claiming the resistance to be proof that “this is not fun” - not realizing I am creating the resistance myself and that every time I resisted I wasn't actually experiencing the exercise as it is in the physical but as a picture of the movement within my mind – not realizing I cannot know whether a movement is fun or not since I have never actually experienced it here in the physical.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give up on the changes I have tried to make with my life as I saw they were not working and/or were too exhausting, not realizing my starting point for those commitments has been fear (reaching for an ideal) instead of being my directive principle myself, and that such commitments will not last.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold on to the ideal image I created as a child.

-- Getting in shape – the change of my self-image --

So when I got in shape again my old self-image of being physically weak and unable was no longer in accordance with that which I was becoming. I was overjoyed with the change – finally I was “winning”! - and my self-definition started to change into the opposite of what I had been. I'm still not really athletic, but it is something I see myself dreaming of – not to look a certain way, but to be strong, skillful and healthy – to be able. I was for example really excited about the fact that for the first time ever I was able to run long distances, because I had been unable to do anything without losing breath – I moved from complete inability to a very good capability.

So now as my leg has been injured I have had to face the fear of losing it all. What if I could no longer run, jump, climb, dance? Who would I be then? What would I be without this able body? And this is where I see how I have made myself dependent on it. I fear terribly much that I will return to what I used to be, and I don't want to go back ever again – I see I react with rejection because I see my past as disgusting – I have defined what I used to be as “less” to feel I am now “more” - to hide my guilt and shame over my past I have turned my back on it and refused to accept it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as I noticed actual change in my body, to react with surprisement – this implying that I had had a self-image and that I was now reacting to this image “breaking” (the image I visioned in my mind not being in accordance with that which I sensed in the physical).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, instead of seeing the change as nothing but movement from one point to another, to interpret the differences between my old self-image and my physical existence to be a positive thing, here creating an opinion / point of view / attitude towards the movement and defining it as a “positive change”, not realizing all change is just change and that to assign positive or negative values is to not see things as that which they really are.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold on to this definition/value of “positive change” because it made me “more” as I perceived myself to be “less” and thus “in need of” an elevation - “deserving” the change because of “all the suffering”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize I held onto the definition/value of “positive change” because of the fear of losing the potential to bring my ideal into flesh.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold on to one point in time/space where my body was a certain way (according to my ideal images and thus to my liking), refusing the past and fearing the future.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as I hold on to one point in time/space I stop moving.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear the ever-changing nature of the flesh, not accepting it as it is – the building blocks of life in motion – but perceiving it to be a mass I can mold and freeze when I'm done molding.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear my body will change in ways I do not want it to because they wouldn't match my ideal image of my body.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that even though change is inevitable, I have directive control over how I change and where to, and that physical change isn't something that “just happens” but something that is completely connected to how I move as who I am as a non-physical being.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as my body changed and my self-image was no longer in accordance with my body, to create a new self-image where I was “more” instead of the old “less”, instead of realizing that to have a self-image at all is to limit oneself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create the new self-image into a “winner” in contrast to the “loser” I had defined myself before.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that to have a self-image in my mind is to see everything I do from outside of myself – to look at myself from a bystander's point of view – to consider how I look instead of how I feel – instead of actually being HERE within and as breath, aware of my physical as it is sensed through the senses, directing myself based on my experience instead of images that only exist within the mind, not realizing mind-images are always nothing but guesswork because everything that happens within the mind is never HERE in the physical – for example, I cannot know how I will look to another person because I will never be able to actually look at myself with anyone's eyes from outside of myself, and thus all mind-images of myself are guesswork.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that a self-image only serves fear, as it is that which one can return to when one's surroundings are challenging and one starts to question oneself – for example: “X did not laugh at my joke. Does that mean I said something wrong? Nah, X probably has a poor sense of humor because I know I am a funny person.”

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to expect myself to live/act/behave according to my self-image, which I have defined to be able to walk, run and jump, and then react with fear when I hurt my leg and could not walk, run or jump.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as I hurt my leg and noticed I cannot walk, run or jump, to react to the breaking of my self-image with fear – fear of losing myself – not knowing what I'd be without my definition of myself – not realizing I re-create myself with every breath and that to have a self-image in my mind is thus to limit myself as a creator as a director within and as myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize I have now lived out both of the polarities – the unable body and the able body – and that if I do not stop myself the cycle will repeat itself from polarity to another like a game of ping pong, because I live as a defined and refined image that is constantly morphing into something further away and which can never be reached, instead of living within and as my physical body as it is now here, as my physical is that which will not be further away but which is always here as long as I exist within this reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to desire to be a picture which is somewhere away from here instead of facing and accepting that which is actually here and doesn't have to be run after.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize everything that my body is right now is here and doesn't have to be attained or sought after, and that all change starts from that which is here, and that if I want to change to improve my health for example, I begin the change by facing that which is actually here and assessing the situation at hand at that moment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that when I begin a changing process by not facing that which is actually here, I will not change, at least not into the direction I want and at least not sustainably.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that an actual sustainable change requires that I face that which is here in complete self-honesty, leaving no point unexamined, turning every rock.

Commitments:

I commit myself to investigate myself during exercise to see what actually moves me, as I now see and realize my starting point for exercise has been partially unclear and needs to be sorted out for me to enjoy exercise as pure movement for the sake of movement.

I commit myself to investigate and write about the point of feeling anxious for not exercising. [A note to self.]

I commit myself to no longer define myself according to how I exercise.

I commit myself, with the assistance and support of breathing, to stabilize myself here to listen to my physical body in every single moment.

I commit myself to realize exercise is not about comparison or competition.

I commit myself to go through my childhood memories of gym classes with writing in order to let them go.

I commit myself to stop defining people who exercise as “sports people”, as I now see, realize and understand they're simply people who exercise for various reasons and that all of us are individual even if we'd have similar interests.

I commit myself to investigate the ideal I have created for myself in terms of physicality and to stop living according to it.

I commit myself to investigate, pin-point, self-forgive and let go of all facets of my self-images, and I commit myself to do this until it's done.