Living Out Loud Volume 2: Your Body is a Wonderland

I just realized that it’s March 1 and I have exactly 33 minutes to write an essay for Genie’s second Living Out Loud project. I love these because it gives me something to write about without having to think too hard for my own topics, and so far, the subjects have been about things that hit home somehow.

My body however, has not been something I’ve been proud of lately so finding what I love about it is a bit of a challenge. It isn’t that I don’t like it, or that I don’t have particular parts I like more than others. It’s just that for the past few months my body has sort of turned against me and more often than not I feel horrible. Feeling horrible invariably, at least in my eyes, is starting to lead to looking horrible. And looking horrible, I’m afraid, leads me to feeling horrible. You get the picture.

As I sit here and write this, my stomach is bloated to 3 times its normal size. If I didn’t actually know that I’ve eaten only a piece of gluten free toast and grapefruit I could be easily convinced that what’s painfully coursing its way through my gut at this moment is broken, splintered glass. If I didn’t know that my weight has dropped, I’d be easily swayed that the reason I can’t fit in my pants is because I eat too much. If I didn’t know those things that connect my legs to my feet were my ankles, I’d swear those swollen little things belonged to someone else. But then I look in the mirror and it is me. The same me I was two years ago before something deep within my abdomen twisted itself into a knot.

And to be honest, I’m frustrated and I’m mad. I’ve been in the health and fitness field since I was 18, and though I haven’t always done things to the letter, I work hard to keep myself in shape, mind, body and soul. I like being fit, I like working out, I like having a body that looks and feels strong. One of the first things I realized when I began working with weights was how much more I felt the presence of my body as a living and integral part of me. Standing at my sink, I was acutely aware of my legs under me, holding me upright, supporting the weight of me, rooting me to the ground. That’s what being fit and healthy does for me: it grounds me and keeps my soul (which has a tendency to wander) connected to my body.

I remember that now as I look in the mirror and I feel oddly defeated. This thing that makes me feel horrible is threatening to erase the me I’ve put all this hard work into becoming. The me who has finally found her own voice, own path, own journey on her own terms, feels like she might be losing a bit of that as it gets buried under this reality. But then I look at my left hip. The tattoo has been there so long I tend to forget about it. A sun and moon, designed by an artist on Melrose Avenue, a sort of trophy to commemorate a cross country move to a place I knew no one to find myself. But its what is next to it that catches my eye. Upon first glance it looks like a lowercase h or an upside down 4, and it came about on a trip to Colorado in 2006. My friend’s 15 years old son, who has only met me twice, looked me in the eye during a conversation over dinner and told me, “Karal, if I were you, from what I’ve seen, I’d get the Chinese symbol for strength.”

And there it is. The Chinese symbol for strength. Right there on my left hip. To remind me that even a 15-year-old boy can see what is there. That, right now at this minute, is worth everything.