You Are More Than Your Body



“All we’ve ever wanted
Is to look good naked
Hope that someone can take it
God save me rejection
From my reflection,
I want perfection.”
Robbie Williams, Bodies

All my life I have struggled with body-image. As a kid it was no problem. I don’t remember thinking anything negative about my body—until I hit 7th Grade, that is. Around the age of 12 I learned to medicate my emotional pain with Payday candy bars, Lay’s Potato Chips and lots of sugary sodas. I wasn’t an active kid, aside from walking to and from school, and so it didn’t take long for me to start my compulsive over-eating journey toward becoming “fatty, fatty two-by-four.”

And as fate would have it, just as puberty was beginning to make me self-consciousness personified, I had to face all of the family and public scorn that came with suddenly being fat.

At one point, I got so self-conscious that I did everything within my little pubescent range of thinking to hide the fat. I wore bulky sweaters—even if it was hot outside. I also learned to stand and walk with my arms folded around my middle section. It felt weird, but I couldn’t handle the stares or the criticism; whether it was real or whether it was coming from my own inner-critic.

I have no doubt that it was during this period of my life that I learned to take the words of my inner-critic and project them into the minds of others. So, from this point forward, I viewed everyone on earth seeing me in the exact same way that I saw myself. And because I had felt like a total loser for having allowed myself to become fat, everyone I encountered saw me in the same hateful way—or so I thought.

Since grade school, life has been a rollercoaster of losing and gaining weight for me. In high school I lost all of the fat I had gained in grade school, and although I have basically been a thin person as an adult, I have struggled with emotionally medicating through over-eating sugary and salty foods, gaining weight and then working to lose it.

Many times I have wanted God to save me from the rejection that I have consistently forced on myself whenever I see my naked reflection in a mirror. I have wanted bodily perfection and it has never been attainable—no matter how thin I am. I remember a time back in the early 1990s when I was so obsessed with being thin that friends actually thought I was anorexic. I wasn’t. But I was obsessed with the idea that I had to have a body thin enough and perfect enough to be lovable. I remember thinking that no one would ever want me or love me otherwise.

This near lifelong obsession with my body-weight has certainly fueled my codependent belief that I am not good enough. It has made me feel like I am not good enough to even be liked as a friend, much less loved. But I’m beginning to look at my body with different eyes today.

There’s a great scene in the movie Eat Pray Love, where Liz and a friend are eating pizza in Naples. Her friend is conscious of the fact that she has gained 10 pounds and she suddenly can’t bring herself to even take a bite out of her pizza. Liz responds by saying she is tired of always judging her value based in the appearance of her body. And she asks her friend to think about any lover she has ever undressed for. Then she asks if any of those lovers has ever asked her to put her clothes back on? Her friend says “no,” and Liz has made her point.

We judge our bodies so harshly because we have warped ideas about how perfect our bodies have to be in order for us to be acceptable, and thus lovable. STOP BEING MEAN TO YOURSELF! These words have become a mantra for me. I am tired of being mean to myself and beating myself up for not having a perfect body. Truth is no one has a perfect body. Even those who show-off what they have fail to show off everything. They have those areas of their bodies that they know aren’t perfect.

STOP STRIVING FOR PERFECTION. It’s unattainable. And all it does is cause you misery. Learn, instead, to love what is. Look at your naked self in that mirror and make a conscious choice to accept what you see, or at the very least commit to improving on those areas that you can safely improve on. Then allow yourself to enjoy what you have. You are more than your physical body. And those people who truly love you, love you for what you do have. They don’t care about anything else. Remember that!

Love what you do have and others will do the same!

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